A Binding Memory
by CV3
Summary: Season 7. Investigating monster sightings in Nebraska, Dean falls victim to an apparently supernatural effect, rendering him comatose and worsening. Sam has one clue - find a hunter Dean inspired years before. That doesn't prove easy, and something even stranger is behind Dean's condition than either Winchester imagined. Sequel to 'If I could, through myself, set your spirit free."
1. Prologue

It was midnight.

The air was cold, signalling the shifting chill of late October. Around the small clearing, all was still, waiting. Moonlight filtered strongly into the circle of empty space in the dense trees, the light a testament - the moon was almost full. Conditions were nearing perfection. The figure that had been standing, pensively regarding the surrounding environment, directed its attention to the collection of items waiting on the straggling grass. Kneeling, it grasped the hilt of a bright knife, white hands working smoothly, and sliced directly across the open palm. Blood dripped silently into the brass basin below, spattering the upturned face of the compass. The tiny needle began to spin.

"Quaero quis perditus inveniri unum," it whispered. Twisting a length of cloth around the injured hand, it reached out for the small lantern, striking the gas flame into light and setting it beyond the brass bowl. Casting its regard around the clearing warily, it produced an old sawed-off shotgun from within the dark folds of its clothing, and laid the weapon gently between the lantern and the bowl.

"Quo ritu potest teneri."

The white hands carefully wound a length of woven cord around the body of the old shotgun. It extracted the little compass from the bowl and threaded it onto the cord.

"Spiritus per carnem potest enmeshed tutam invenias, et obligo."

The tiny needle spun so fast, the compass began to vibrate and rattle against the wood and steel, the buzzing drone reverberating out into the stillness of the night clearing like a hovering insect. White hands reached out, lifting the cap from the gas lantern to expose the flame. Grasping a tiny package of bound cloth, it emptied the powdered contents into the waiting maw of the fire. A bright flash momentarily illuminated the midnight ministrations, before all light died with a hiss and sizzle.

The figure knelt a moment, still. Its final act was the step it needed to pour all its considerable will into. It motioned to the darkness, inviting it in.

"By voluntas mea est, ego illum voco ad me."

It stood, emptying a dash of fine whiskey into the brass bowl, struck a match and watched in consideration as the contents began to burn away harmlessly. It remained only as long as it had to, before it knelt and took up the bound shotgun, grasping the cold, long-inert weapon in white hands. The deed was done. Now, it waited.


	2. Chapter 1 : Demons and monsters

_Long Pine, Nebraska - 11:45pm_

Sam Winchester was cold.

More aptly, he was freezing, wet, covered with mud, exhausted, and annoyed.

He shifted the shotgun from one hand to the other, his fingers stiff from cold. The mud was heavy in his coat, his shoes, in his hair, everywhere. Dean's figure trudged in front of him, his brother's hair spiked crazily with the mud that covered Sam. From the set of Dean's shoulders, his mood was no better than Sam's. For his part, Sam didn't blame either of them. In the cemetery behind him, the bodies of six assorted monsters lay quickly burning, doused liberally in lighter fluid. Time for the Winchesters to make themselves scarce before the fire was reported. Cops were only the second-last thing they needed.

It had been an unusual evening, even for them. Several days before, they had caught the tail of some strange activity in the area. Stranger still because it definitely involved some kind of monster (or six, as it turned out) but no one was dead. Not a single stiff. There had simply been sightings, stories, a few disappearances, weird things happening around the cemetery at night that had locals spooked, but nothing to merit any kind of concern that translated into action. Since their progress in any other direction amounted to a neat and precise zero, they had decided to find out what was going on.

What they had found that night - a convenient full mood hanging above them - had been six monsters, standing in a loose circle. The first, a shape shifter in the form of a thirty-something guy, clutching a jar filled with something that was unmistakably blood. That was never good. The others ranged from werewolf to dispossessed old world gods to things Sam didn't even have a name for. These days, it didn't matter. They had simply collected the assortment of weapons needed to dispatch them, and picked a fight. A fight that had inevitably landed everyone - Winchesters and monsters alike - into the mud to fight for their respective lives. There had been one twist in what Dean would once have called a "good old fashioned monster hunt" - and that was when Sam stepped out of the cover of trees and racked his shotgun, six pairs of monster eyes had focused on him and darkened into solid black. Ah.

"Demons!" he had yelled at Dean, and heard his brother's returning cry of "what the -" before he found himself airborne, tumbling back and out of sight behind the gravestones. Without a conscious shift, Sam felt his body gearing for action, his heart rate spike and his muscles bunch. He had dropped the shotgun - iron rounds weren't going to be of much use against the possessing demons, and scrambled for something that would (as it turned out, only a flask of holy water) as he began the exorcism he knew by heart. Thanking Bobby's memory for the tip of the charm tattooed into his chest eliminating him as a candidate in this little possession party, Sam was nonetheless acutely aware that he was basically defenceless against six demon-possessed monsters. A situation he wasn't exactly accustomed to.

He doubled back, thinking to run back to the road - grabbing Dean on the way - and find the salt, find the knife, find some way of immobilizing the demon posse to make the exorcism actually effective. He had been running the possibilities over in his mind when something caught at his ankle, laying him out heavily in the mud. The possessed shifter pawed at his feet, his legs, standing Sam's hair on end with revulsion. He kicked at it, twisting onto his back to flick the last of the holy water back into its face. The water hissed and smoked on the shifter's possessed skin, and to his surprise, it gave a guttural scream and the invading demon poured in a whirlwind of black smoke from the gaping mouth. Both Sam and shifter were still a moment, both surprised, before realization snapped back into the shifter's 100% pure garden-variety monster eyes and malevolence settled on Sam. It grinned, continuing its crawl up his body, no doubt to end at his neck. Its weight doubled, and Sam found himself looking into his own face.

"Oh no you don't," he ground out, but the shifter's weight was still on his legs, preventing a grab for the silver knife that he had strapped to his left calf.

Pulling back his hand as far as he was able, he opted in such tight quarters for an open

strike with the heel of his hand to the shifter's nose, breaking it cleanly and sending the cartilage back into its head. The shifter howled and involuntarily retreated, allowing Sam to grab for the knife. He pounced, pushing the shifter backwards, and punched the knife good and deep into the heart. The body beneath him stilled, and the shifter stared back sightlessly with his own green eyes.

He had no time to think about that now. Pulling the knife from the shifter's corpse, he rolled to his feet, darting his eyes around the dappled moonlight of the cemetery, seeking out the others. He hadn't seen Dean since he had been launched over the tombstones. He stumbled back the way he had come, seeking the spot where they had first come upon this weird company, but was struck unexpectedly from behind just as he heard Dean's shout, and saw another whirl of demon-smoke twist away through the dark trees. Sam face-planted back into the mud, feeling something sharp stab invasively into his ribs. He yelped and twisted his head around, cramping his neck, to see the half-changed werewolf crouching over him, acid-blue eyes feral and completely devoid of possession, its claws actively trying to rake his back through the mud-coated jacket. _Crap _Sam thought, and flashed to the Taurus in the waistband of his jeans. What was it loaded with again? It was - literally - worth a shot. They had been anticipating monsters, and demons had been the curve ball. He grasped it just as the wolf took another swipe, its monster form shifting with the moonlight now the demon within had gone, a claw opening up the shoulder of his jacket, and his arm beneath it for good measure. He thrashed under the weight of the second monster that evening and twisted, emptying bullets first into the wolf's face as it was the only part of it he could reach, then into the heart as the beast reared backwards with a howl of pain and fury. The monster staggered, then collapsed, shrivelling back into the form of the older woman it had once been.

Sam stood, wincing at his clawed arm and the piercing stab at his back, and looked down at the body, gathering his thoughts. The woman was still, obviously dead.

_Dean, _he thought, and that pushed him back into action. He knew by his shout that his brother was still alive when the werewolf had jumped him. How long had they fought? Sam stumbled back toward the tombstones, seeking Dean, watchful of the other four monsters. He stumbled, picking up speed, back toward the tree line where he had encountered the shifter - and saw Dean kneeling beside the body. For some reason he couldn't place, Sam stopped.

The dead monster still wore Sam's shape, and Dean was kneeling beside the body, completely still. His silver knife was in his hand, and he held Shifter Sam's wrist in the other as if ready to conduct the necessary checks - but instead, he simply knelt there, staring at the shifter with an unreadable expression. Sam grasped his arm, testing. It wasn't too bad, he could take it if this was a second shifter and not his brother. He stepped from the darkness of the trees, and Dean's head snapped up with the barrel of his colt. Sam held up his hands.

"It's me."

Dean's eyes flickered between Sam and the shifter, the uncertainty that had sadly become more and more apparent in his brother clear in his eyes.

Sam had nodded his head at the shifter's corpse.

"Why don't you slice that thing up and see for yourself?"

His eyes on Sam, Dean drew the silver blade across the shifter's arm. Even in death, the metal sizzled against the monster's inert skin.

Dean dropped the shifter, stood, and tucked the knife back into his belt without a word.

"Come on," was all he said, before he turned his back on Sam and headed back in the direction Sam himself had been moving.

Sam had sighed, and followed silently.

As it turned out, two of the remaining four had run when the demons were no longer holding them there - weaker species that were still wary of hunters in the night.

Dean had put down the zombie that had pursued him without much effort, and the fanged thing they found waiting in the darkness of the trees responded very well to being sliced into pieces.

Wordlessly, the brothers had piled the scattered bodies and set them on fire. They both stood and watched a moment before turning back and heading for the road, neither hunter in the mood for explaining this to the police.

So, Sam was left cold, sore, wet and covered with mud, and Dean wasn't exactly forthcoming with quips. He shifted the shotgun and grasped his arm with a grunt. Dean cast him back a glance.

"They hurt you?"

"Just the clawed parts," he said.

"We'll clean it up when we get back."

Sam nodded. Since Dean had started the conversation, he cleared his throat and pursued it.

"What the hell do you think was going on back there?" Ironic choice of words between them, he thought to himself, then wished he hadn't. Dean didn't seem to notice.

"Demons possessing monsters? I dunno, it's a new one for me. But there's this."

He held up the jar of blood - and something - for Sam's inspection.

"Yeah. But that demon Dean, it smoked out at just a touch of holy water. It is me or is that a little soft-serve for a demon?"

Dean shrugged.

Sam pushed. "Did they smoke out of the zombie or anything else that easy?"

There was a time when something like that would have worried Sam deeply, worried him that demons responded differently to him because of the curse Yellow-Eyes had wrought on him, what had made him feel like a freak since his 22nd birthday. But things had certainly changed, and that seemed insignificant now. He knew now what old Yellow-Eyes had intended, had lived the reality of that intention, and it took the power out of the mystery. _You're still mine, _whispered a distant voice in his head, and he locked it out before it could go any further.

"Dean?"

"Yeah they smoked out, who cares? We'd be dead if they hadn't, Sam, so I for one ain't complaining. We were completely not prepared for this."

"And how exactly could we have been prepared for six demon-possessed monsters conducting midnight rituals in graveyards like a b-grade movie?"

Again, Dean no more than shrugged, and Sam bit down irritation.

"You think - Crowley? Still keeping demons off our tails?"

This time, his brother didn't even bother to shrug, and Sam's irritation melted into sadness. We're not dead, he thought. These days, that was enough for Dean.

They trudged back to the road, the grey Pontiac waiting for them further depressing Sam. Funny, he thought, that he'd ever be missing the sight of Dean's car. His brother unceremoniously threw the bag of weapons into the back seat and slid behind the wheel. Sam followed suit, holding his arm in support.

"They get you?" he asked belatedly.

"Nope," Dean replied, though the side of his face was already beginning to darken with bruising. Sam didn't push it.

Lodgings these days usually consisted of squats. Again, there was a time both of them complained about seedy motel rooms, but these days, a motel would have been welcome. But with little progress still made on Leviathan fronts, they made do with what they had to. They drove the twenty minute journey back to the vacant holiday house they had borrowed for the meantime in silence. Sam's back was seizing up, and he was keen to get some hot water into the puncture wound. He didn't think it was deep, but it was still uncomfortable choked in mud. That was the beauty of that kind of place, though - often, utilities were still left on.

"I got to wash this out," Sam told his brother as they dumped their bags on the living room floor. Dean nodded, making a beeline for the beer in the fridge. Sam headed for the bathroom, peeling layers of mud and clothing off as he went.

He switched the light on, angling his back to the bathroom mirror to look over his shoulder. Beneath the mud, there was a single puncture on the left side of his back, but it actually wasn't as bad as he'd expected. Mud and movement grinding in had made it painful, but it would heal nicely, and had already stopped bleeding. His left arm bore a slice across the shoulder, but he wasn't going as far as stitches. Binding it up would do.

Other than that, the scalding water felt good on his skin, as did getting clean and even if Dean wouldn't, replaying the events of the hunt over in his mind, seeking an explanation. Demons didn't roll over that easy. If they had smoked out, it was because they had been told to, he was sure of it. Crowley's standing order, he assumed - stay out of the Winchesters' way so long as Leviathan oozed around. That was enough to explain why the demons hadn't killed both he and Dean on the spot, because his brother was right, they hadn't been prepared for that. But it didn't explain why demons were possessing monsters at all. With Crowley on his mind, he wondered as he stuck his head under the shower if the King of Hell was still seeking purgatory through monsters, as he had using Sam's soul as leverage. But that was to take purgatory, to crack open the door enough to allow Castiel to gather souls as ammunition against Raphael.

Sam sighed, wishing the water would wash away memories and regrets as well as mud and blood. Poor Cas. He shook his head, physically sending water flying, and focused on the puzzle at hand, trying not to dwell on the sorrows of the past. If monsters had their link to purgatory and Crowley knew it, it was possible the monster/demon dance-off was geared at dealing with the unexpected by-product of that door opening, everyone's problem - Leviathan. The jar of blood confirmed his suspicions. But where were they getting the ingredients Cas had used? Did Leviathan ooze count as blood of a purgatory native? If so, what were the demons trying to do? Re-enact the spell that had set Leviathans loose on the world and somehow shove them back in? It was a theory that certainly merited thought. Sam shut off the water, determined to make Dean _connect _with this. With anything. He needed his brother in the hunt right now.

He towelled dry, replacing his mud-coated clothes with jeans and a t-shirt. These days, neither Winchester really let their guard down. When Sam would have once opted for track pants, now it was jeans and a serviceable shirt, socks on in case a quick move was needed. Dean had slept in his boots for even longer.

Sam clumped down the stairs, blind to the overpowering floral décor of the seldom-used holiday house, ready to take up the issue.

Dean was standing by the door, holding a bottle of beer loosely by the neck in one hand. Apparently staring at nothing.

Sam stopped at the bottom of the stairs and frowned at his back.

"Dean?"

His brother turned around. "Huh?"

"What are you doing?"

"What? Nothing, I was just … doesn't matter. What're you doing?"

Sam frowned at him a moment longer, remembering for a moment the same stillness, the curiously vacant expression, kneeling over the corpse of the Sam-shaped shifter. He shrugged it off.

"I was thinking. Those demons were possessing monsters. Not exactly usual. Monsters connect to purgatory, right, that was Crowley's whole deal making us catch them, forcing them to give him access to purgatory. A jar like that was used in the ritual Cas and Crowley worked to crack purgatory - which let Leviathans out. So, I was thinking, what if he's trying to re-enact the ritual, demons ride the monsters in, and find some way to shove the Leviathans back in? I mean Crowley seems to hate these things as much as we do, which is why all the demons smoked out instead of, you know, killing us."

Dean was standing with his head tilted as if listening, his eyes abstracted. He said nothing.

"Dean?"

Still nothing. Sam's irritation was starting to harden into worry. He stepped forward, grasping his brother's mud-slicked arm and squeezing slightly.

"Dean."

Green eyes snapped into focus and tilted up to stare at Sam.

"What?"

"Are you okay?" Sam asked, ducking his head to peer into his brother's face. "Did you hit your head?"

He remembered seeing Dean tumbling through the air and over the gravestones, as the demons reacted to the hunters' intrusion. He could easily have cracked his head on solid granite of one of the headstones. Again.

"I'm fine," Dean shrugged him off. He looked down at his clothing. "Scratch that, I'm filthy. I'm gonna go wash up."

He brushed past Sam and in the direction of the bathroom, his brother frowning after him.

Generally, Dean teased Sam relentlessly about how long he spent in the shower, usually involving some wisecrack about how much hair he had and/or how much of a girl he was. Truth be told, it was usually because he was a) bigger, a fact which he delighted in pointing out as often as possible, and b) it was a good time to think. Something about the hot water seemed to focus his mind on the issue at hand, the sting of the water somehow preventing it from wandering existentially.

Dean was usually in and out - but not in about two minutes. No sooner had he disappeared upstairs, he was back again and heading for the door, half-dressed in unlaced boots, a t-shirt, the same mud-logged coat he had been wearing, with mud and water still all over his face and hair. Sam was too stunned to move for a moment, before he intercepted Dean's path to the door, holding out his hands against his brother's retreat.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"What?" Dean asked, looking up at Sam.

"Dean, you're covered in mud and you haven't even dried off, let alone washed and dressed properly. Where the hell are you going?"

"I -" Dean looked down, running the palms of his hands against his mud-soaked jacket as if just realizing it was there. "I don't know, I just have to be somewhere."

"Okay," Sam said, grasping Dean gently by both arms and smiling despite himself. "You've earned yourself a concussion, big brother. How about you go back upstairs and actually wash properly, and then we'll deal with the head injury, okay?"

"Yeah," Dean agreed, frowning, but he obeyed Sam's direction up the stairs and back into the bathroom, and didn't snark when Sam ran the water and at least got his brother out of his muddy boots and jacket.

The second go, Dean managed to actually shower properly, and had towelled off enough for Sam to check for obvious head injuries. He sat Dean down on one of the beds, dressed almost-sensibly in jeans and a t-shirt, and walked his fingers across his skull.

"Any pain? Blurred vision?"

"No. I know what a concussion is, Sam."

He stood up before Sam could do anything else, and slammed the window closed. Sam raised an enquiring brow.

"It's cold." Dean snapped.

Yes, it was October, but it wasn't that cold now they were out of the mud and water and graveyards in the middle of the night. Sam let it go. He fished out a pen-light and shined it into Dean's eyes. Both pupils contracted quickly and evenly against the light. What the?

"Dean? You feel sick, or dizzy?"

Dean shook his head, bringing his arms up around himself. "Cold."

Sam found one of Dean's warmer jackets and settled it around his brother's shoulders.

"Find any cuts, blood loss?" Sam asked, checking for any signs of blood seeping through clothing, pressing Dean's skin to check for the return of colour. Dean said nothing. Sam looked back up into his brother's eyes.

"Dean? Hey!"

Dean's vacant stare snapped back to Sam, and he stood up without a word and clambered down the stairs. Sam followed on his heels, anxiety making him sweat.

Again, Sam's longer legs barely outstripped Dean, stopping him just before the door. He grasped Dean's shoulders, actively pushing him back, as Dean was actually offering resistance this time, pushing against Sam's restraining hold.

"Dean stop, stop it!"

"I have to go," Dean answered vaguely.

"Go? Go where? Why?" Sam felt panic beginning a slow crawl up his spine, and tried to keep it out of his voice. What _now?_

Dean frowned, settling a hand against his chest as though confused by something inside, and Sam's memory skittered back many years to Dean's accidental electrocution and pending death via heart damage - if not for the reaper incident.

"I don't … Sam, something -" green eyes snapped wide, snagged on Sam's face.

"Sammy …" Dean's voice was a whisper.

Okay, screw trying not to panic. Something was very wrong, and Sam couldn't take much more of Very Wrong right now. He grabbed hold of Dean again, holding tightly.

"Dean? What's going on, what's wrong?"

Dean squeezed his eyes closed, then snapped them open wide with effort.

"Find …"

"Find? Find what?"

"Sammy," Dean grasped Sam's arms in return, his gaze for a moment clear and focused. "Sam, _find Danny_."

Before Sam could ask what the hell he was talking about one too many times that evening, Dean's eyes rolled back and he went suddenly boneless. He would have hit the floor hard if not for Sam's hold. As if was, it was all Sam could do to ease them both to the floor, laying Dean out on his back.

Sam stood, raking his fingers through his hair. He had tried squeezing Dean's shoulders, calling his name, shaking him and in the end slapping him, but nothing had roused his brother, who was by all appearances out cold.

Possibilities crowded his mind. The bizarre demon monster possession, the Leviathan connection, the flight over the gravestones possibly ending in a solid crack on the head.

Sam was panting. God, he couldn't take Dean to an ER. He well remembered Sheriff Mills' experiences with Saint Leviathan hospital. No, a hospital was too much of a temptation for a Leviathan, where people died all the time. Easy meal, low profile, just Leviathan style. Dean would be defenceless. But if Dean was badly hurt, what the hell was he going to do? He'd been waiting for something like this to happen. Living off the grid was tough but do-able - until something bad happened. He tried to think of anyone they knew with medical training, but allies had been pared down to the bones recently, and he had nowhere to turn. Not even Bobby. God, Bobby. Dean was all he had, sprawled still at his feet, and he was alone.

For a moment, the sickly floral decor of the borrowed house roared red and black, the high walls around him, the flames licking up his very soul, and the monster of monsters he knew was caged with him, its natural form much more terrifying than the decaying human shell could possibly have been. Eyes like sucking darkness focused on him with the origin of hate.

Sam found himself on his hands and knees on the floor beside a still unconscious Dean, panting, dripping sweat on the floor. He squeezed his eyes shut, caught his lip and bit down hard. _Get a grip, Sam _he ordered himself. _Think. _He pushed himself up to his knees, dragging his arm across his forehead and looking down at Dean.

_Think._

He pulled out his cellphone. The line clicked into life.

"Frank, do you know anyone with medical training that'll keep us off the grid?"

There was silence on the line.

"Who's this?"

"Who the hell do you think it is? It's Sam."

"How do I know that?"

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, willing down panic translating into anger.

"I don't have time for this, Frank. Dean could be badly hurt, and I can't exactly take him to Leviathan ER. I need help."

There was silence, and Sam was about to hang up when Frank's gruff voice crackled over the line.

"Where are you now?"

"Nebraska."

"If you really are Sam Winchester, bring Dean to Lincoln, alone, to the Embassy Suites. I'll check in under an alias, I can be there by midnight. And I'll be doing checks for the Levis, on the motel and on you. Got it?"

"Thanks," Sam whispered.

The line clicked off, and Sam pressed his cellphone against his forehead a moment, thinking. Then he dialled again. It rang several times.

"Hello?" answered the sleepy voice.

"Hey, Sheriff Mills, um - I'm sorry it's so late. Uh -"

"Sam?" Interrupted Jodi Mills' voice. "That you?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"What's wrong?" her voice had sharpened. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay, but Dean … Dean could be hurt. Do you know anyone with medical training, anyone we can trust?"

"I know a paramedic from Sioux Falls, he was around during that whole zombie incident here. He won't ask any questions. I could ask him on a favour."

Sam almost melted with relief.

"I'm in Nebraska, I'm taking Dean to Lincoln as fast as I can. Frank, an old friend of Bobby's, he's going to meet us there. For our kind of reasons. Do you think your medic could make the trip?"

"I'll make sure he does," Mills replied, and Sam knew the steel in her voice. "I'll go with him. I'll see you there, Sam."

Sam clicked off the phone and gazed down at Dean, clenching the phone in one hand.

He couldn't think of anyone else they even knew anymore. Dad, Bobby, Cas, Lisa - even people they had connected with on hunts - Dean's girl Cassy, or Sam's friend Sarah from upstate. It wasn't safe, for them or for him and Dean, while Leviathans existed. He thought again about the demon-possessed monsters. It didn't seem so important now.

Who cared, if they were alone and in trouble? Even in Hell, for so long he couldn't even contemplate it, he had taken comfort in the certainty that Dean was alive, and okay. It was one thing Lucifer never taunted him with, and he knew he would have, had Dean been dead. He had resisted being torn to pieces with that knowledge - _Dean's alive, he's okay, he's out there with Lisa living his life and you made that possible. _But what if you made it through that, and he dies? A voice whispered in his head. He clamped down on it. He was getting ahead of himself, and none of this was helping his brother.

"Okay, Dean. Okay." Sam stood up, checked Dean's pulse and breathing, shoved a cushion beneath his head and ran upstairs. He stuffed all their scattered belongings into the duffel bags, thankful that the weapons were already in the boosted Pontaic, and ran out to the car. He grabbed Dean's boots, jamming them onto his brother's feet and tying quickly, then followed with his own. Everything else packed in Winchester record time, Sam shrugged into a dry jacket and knelt beside Dean. His brother was exactly where Sam had left him, still and unresponsive. His heartbeat and breathing remained steady.

"Okay, Dean. Time to go. Come on."

Sam dragged Dean's right arm over his right shoulder, and hoisted him into a fireman's carry. Sam had been bigger than Dean since he was sixteen, but his brother had always been muscular and solid, not exactly a lightweight. Dean had trimmed down some in the time since Bobby and Cas died, which helped in Sam's efforts to stagger out to the car and somehow load his unconscious brother into the front seat.

Sam slid behind the wheel, and with a last check on Dean's vitals, tore off for Lincoln.

Sam had only stopped once on the drive to the city, to check on Dean. The quiet was freaking him out to the point that a few hours on the road, Sam had Metallica blaring at a volume worthy of Dean himself, just to ease the creepy sensation of his brother beside him, but silent and still. Sure he had his fare share of driving through the nights (or days, depending) while Dean took his turn to sleep, either at Sam's side or crunched up somehow in the backseat of the Impala. But this was different. All those times, Sam had taken it for granted that Dean would wake up and demand cheeseburgers and truck-stop waitresses. Now, he wasn't sure Dean would wake up at all. And after everything … God knows he and his brother had their problems the past few years, they'd each been pushed to beating the hell out of the other more than once, and things had by no means been smooth and easy between them but now, fear gripped Sam. When Dean was in real danger, it hit him just how much he needed him, despite trying his best to convince Dean of the opposite. If anything bad happened to Dean … he didn't think he could stand it, even after everything, if Dean …

Sam shook his head. No. He was being an idiot, working himself up on ifs and maybes. He had to focus on getting Dean to Frank and the Sheriff, and _help_.

He took the turn off, calculating quickly in his head that it should be only a further 20 minutes. Making a cursory sweep for speed traps, he floored the accelerator, anxiety having kept him sharp for hours.

Before 15 minutes was up, the sign for the Embassy Suites came into view, and Sam felt his shoulders drop an inch. The sight of the police cruiser in the lot momentarily spiked his heart rate, before he recognized the South Dakota licence plate. Mills had arrived before he had? He wondered vaguely how Frank had taken that.

Frank himself had sent a curt text to Sam's phone informing him of the room number, and Sam located the door, parking the Pontiac outside. Checking Dean again, he slid from the car, casting his eyes over Mills' cruiser. Neither she nor her medic was anywhere in sight. He made his way to the motel room door warily, knocking softly.

A moment, then the door jerked open two inches, caught by the chain, and a jet of something cold and wet came from inside to hit him squarely in the mouth.

Sam stumbled back a step, spluttering and dragging his sleeve across his mouth.

"What -"

"Sam?"

Sam spat whatever it was onto the path and blinked at the door.

"Frank? What did you just spray me with?"

A heartbeat, while Frank's murky dark eyes shifted back and forth behind round glasses.

"Doesn't matter, if you were Leviathan, you'd be cookin'. Get in here."

"Dean -"

"Sam?"

Mills pushed her way to the door, Frank grumbling audibly, and unlatched the chain.

"Dean in the car?"

Sam nodded. Mills motioned behind her, and a man Sam didn't recognize appeared at her heels.

"This is Pete, the medic I mentioned. Here's here to help, Sam."

The small, lean, olive-skinned man behind her nodded his head. Sam nodded back, and turned to lead them toward the Pontiac. Frank remained just inside the threshold, eyes wary.

Mills and Pete the medic followed Sam to the car, where Dean remained slumped back against the seat. Pete pushed past them both, practiced hands ghosting over Dean. After a moment, he looked up at Sam.

"Help me get him inside," he said, his voice unidentifiably accented with something foreign.

Between the three of them, they took Dean inside, where Frank was waiting.

Sam and Mills laid Dean out on the bed while Pete organized equipment.

Their clothing and weapons were still in the car, but at the moment, it was low on Sam's priority list.

Dean was pale against the loud striped motel bedclothes, and so still.

Pete had wordlessly cut through his brother's t-shirt with scissors, and was conducting an inspection of Dean in general. Pulse points, reflexes, response to pain, any surface wounds, heart rate and blood pressure, respiration, circulation, temperature, pressure checking for internal bleeding in his body cavities, assessing the response of his eyes to light, his skull for soft patches, swelling, blood or general damage, carefully checking his spine for damage and the movement of his neck.

Mills cast Sam a glance from the foot of Dean's bed, but Sam was beginning to feel like he was on a different planet.

"Jodi said he collapsed," Pete said without pausing in his inspection of Dean. "What was he doing at the time?"

"Trying to get out the door," Sam replied.

"Why?"

"I don't know. Neither did he. He kept saying he had to go somewhere, but didn't know where, or why. I think I told him he had a concussion."

From his crouch beside Dean's bed, Pete looked over his shoulder, fixing dark eyes on Sam.

"Why would you have thought that?"

"We were … in fight earlier. I didn't see anything, and he didn't say anything, but from the way he was acting I thought he might have taken a hit to the head."

Pete nodded.

"How was he behaving before he collapsed?"

"I don't know - strange. Like he had a concussion I guess."

"So, confused? Vacant, in and out? Uncharacteristic sort of behaviour, either aggressive or passive? Was he steady on his feet?"

"He was moving okay, until he just passed out. But he was … like he was checking out on me, then snapping back. Confused, not knowing where he was going or why. He'd gone to wash up, and come back a minute later half washed and half dressed, saying he had to go."

Pete nodded again. "Did he complain of any pain, numbness, pressure?"

Sam shook his head.

"When I said he wouldn't ask questions, I meant _non medical _questions," Mills said from behind Sam's shoulder. He turned to glance at her, finding the Sheriff leaning against the dresser, her arms crossed. Sam smiled, grateful. At Dean's side, Pete nodded again, smiling back at her.

"Any other clues?" he asked Sam. "Anything out of the ordinary, or anything else he may have said?"

Out of the ordinary? Sam thought. What was out of the ordinary for a Winchester?

"He said he was cold," he remembered.

"But no blood loss?" Pete asked.

"No, I checked."

Pete nodded, something that was obviously a mannerism with him.

"Well, he doesn't appear to be in shock. His pulse, blood pressure and respirations and airways are all fine, his body is responding to pain and his reflexes are functioning. His pupils respond appropriately to light, no visible wounds or blood loss, no distension or bruising from any internal injuries. As far as I can tell, no broken bones. His spinal cord is intact, as is his skull with no soft patches or swelling. Without an MRI we can't really see what is going on in his head, and without blood test results we can't be sure if this is the result of any toxin. The only thing I can see from a cursory exam is his temperature is slightly low, but if you were both wet and cold for a good while, that could do it short-term. He's not hypothermic, but if you said that was the only thing he mentioned out of the ordinary and his temperature is still down, it could be the only clue. Of what, I don't know."

"So what do we do?" Mills asked.

Pete sighed and stood, scratching the back of his head.

"Well, I know you don't want to tangle with hospitals, but I'd be remiss if I didn't advise it. Dean's unresponsive. His body is functioning, but he's basically comatose at this point. There's only so long the body can remain like that. Two days at most without water. A week without food, you wouldn't want to push it much past that. His reflexes are working - swallowing and cough, but I really wouldn't recommend anything taken orally, even water. Then there's the reason for this. If it's a toxin or some kind of poison, it's possible his condition could deteriorate, and if it does, it'll happen fast. Same goes for if it's a head injury, even though there's no outward sign of trauma, it would be something internal. Dean's young and appears fit, so it's unlikely it'll be anything like an aneurism, but you never know. Then again, if its an environmental factor, taking Dean out of that environment could allow his body's natural equilibrium to reassert. Really, without further testing guys …"

Pete dropped his hands in defeat.

"Is he in any danger?" Sam asked faintly, his eyes on his brother.

Pete followed Sam's gaze back to Dean.

"From what I can see, not right now. He's stable."

Sam nodded.

"Whare are you thinking, kid?" Frank asked, and for a moment he sounded so much like Bobby that Sam whipped his gaze up to him in surprise.

"Dean said something before he collapsed," he remembered slowly. "He said _find Danny."_

"Who's Danny?"

"Danny Ellis. He's a hunter we met a few years ago. Dean had run into him on a job a few years before that, when Dad was still alive. We haven't seen him in years."

"Why this guy?" Frank pressed, following a hunter's clues as sharply as Pete followed medical clues.

Sam glanced at Pete. Mills, the cop of the company, followed his eyes.

"He's okay, Sam."

After a moment, Sam nodded.

"When Dean met Danny, he was hunting what he thought was a vengeful spirit. It was a mess, but it turned out it was binding magic behind it."

"And hunters tend to specialize in what got them into this life in the first place," Frank supplied. Sam had been thinking the same thing.

"So, Dean told you to find this guy Danny because what - binding magic is behind this?" Mills asked.

"Stranger things have happened," Sam replied darkly.

"Okay, so what now? You going to track down this guy?"

"Hopefully I won't have to. Danny lives in Hartford, Wisconsin."

"No road warrior, then," Mills joked.

"Not all hunters live on the road. Bobby never did," Sam replied, and Mills smiled at him sadly. Shared sorrow.

"It'll take a while," Mills said. "What about Dean?"

Four pairs of eyes look down at the still form of Dean Winchester.

"We'll look after Dean," Frank said, surprising in his rough voice.

Dean had often said that Frank was a surprise, that what you saw was a fraction of what you got. Sam was beginning to agree. Despite the fact that Frank and Mills were both unquestionably allies, Sam felt a sudden reluctance to leave Dean with them alone. He knew the root of that feeling - they weren't Bobby. The loss of their friend was still keen. Had Bobby been alive, Sam would not have questioned leaving Dean in such a state and going in search of the solution himself. Since his death, he and Dean had been cut and bruised a few times, but nothing as serious as this. The truth was that Sam couldn't watch over Dean and go and do the last thing his brother had instructed him to do at the same time. If Dean's symptoms didn't appear to Pete to be medical, then that only left the supernatural, and asking a hunter was the most sensible thing to do.

Sam nodded. "Thanks."

Despite Frank trying to insist Sam get some sleep before setting out, the younger Winchester felt oddly as if a meter had started running. He needed to find Danny. Though he could not understand why, and Mills had said she intended to bring back some of Bobby's library to search for any clues (something that _could _be done whilst watching Dean, she had said with a smile). He trusted those last words, despite Dean's odd behaviour. The green eyes had been clear and sharp. _Sammy, find Danny._

Metallica again dominated Sam's drive, followed closely by ACDC. Sam smiled to himself as he tapped his hands absently against the wheel in time with _Back in Black. _He'd always complained about Dean's mind-numbing taste in music - until his brother was not there to play it.

Besides, mind-numbing was what he wanted during the long drive. He wanted to remain focused on what he was doing like any other hunt. What was the next step, proper planning for what he intended, weighing the possibilities, creating a sound strategy. _Not _going out of his mind with worry. Hell was fading, but he had still spent longer there than he had on earth, longer as a dispossessed soul than he had a living man. Such a thing didn't fade overnight. Dean was his stone number one right now.

Sam pulled his thoughts away, knowing what happened if he continued down that path. No. he had to focus on getting to Hartford, finding Danny Ellis, and taking him back to Dean as quick as possible. If Dean had been so sure, Sam had to have faith that Danny held the key to this. That the hunter could save Dean - save them both.

In the end, Sam did have to sleep. He caught four disturbed hours cramped in the back of the Pontiac on an off-ramp. But Dean's still face permeated his thoughts, and he was soon back on the road to Wisconsin.

It was late afternoon when he made Hartford. He hadn't spent long in this part of the country, maybe a month or two with Dad when he was a kid. It wasn't exactly a hotbed of supernatural activity. Nevertheless, Dean had got the address from Danny when the three hunters had met again in Iowa a few years before, and Sam rolled to a stop in the boosted Pontiac on a narrow, leafy street outside number 320. He looked up at the row of slightly poky weatherboard houses with their sagging verandas.

He took the steps two at a time, and knocked on Danny's door. There was no answer. Sam attempted to peer through the frosted glass pane at the top of the front door, but could make out nothing but the patches of light let in by the surrounding windows.

He frowned, looking around. It was then his eyes snagged on four soggy newspapers left abandoned on the verge.

"Can I help you?" enquired a voice to his left. Sam spun around, facing an older woman standing on the small patch of front lawn next door, holding a washing basket.

"I was uh, I was just -"

He pointed to Danny's door.

"I'm a friend of Danny's, I was in these parts and thought I'd drop in on him. Maybe I should have called, 'cause he's not in. Do you know where he is?"

"He's not there," the neighbour replied. "I don't know where he is."

"That's too bad," Sam pushed. "I won't be here long and it's been ages since I've seen him. Do you know when he'll be back?"

"Oh, he keeps funny hours, that one. Always in and out. Sometimes he's away for a week or so, for his work, you know. But - well."

"Well?" Sam pushed further.

The neighbour shook her head. "It's probably nothing, it's just that he hasn't been home in _weeks. _Sometimes he's gone for a few days, or a week or even two weeks once. But he's been gone longer than that this time, and he seemed … stressed, I suppose is the word, when he left. I do hope he's not had troubles."

_Great, _thought Sam. _Just great._

He stepped down from Danny's veranda towards the neighbour, who drew back slightly. Sam smiled and lightened his voice in an attempt to compensate for the intimidating effect his size often had.

"What makes you think he was in trouble?"

"Well, I don't like to gossip, his business is his. But … he just seemed stressed. He came back in one morning, packed a good load of things into that old truck of his, running around like he was in a rush. Too distracted to talk, even though I waved. Then he took off, not a word about where he was going or when he'd be back. If he's fixing to go for more than a week he always lets me know." She shrugged. "I haven't seen him since. Maybe I'm just a little worried for him. His phone has been ringing off the hook, at all times of the night, too."

"Do you know where he went? Sam asked, the concern in his voice entirely genuine.

"No," the neighbour replied. "Danny keeps to himself, but he's a nice young man."

Sam nodded. Nothing more he could get out of the neighbour.

"Okay, well if you see him, will you tell him Sam dropped by? I'd really love to see him again."

The woman smiled. "Of course."

Sam thanked her, and returned to the Pontiac. He only drove around the corner to a local diner, to drink more coffee than was good for him and wait for nightfall. The neighbour's sparse information about Danny's apparently rushed exit a few weeks ago wasn't enough. Sam needed to find him now.

By 9pm, the narrow streets were quiet, and Danny's neighbour was engrossed in her TV. With an eye on her, Sam knelt by Danny's back door and carefully picked the lock. The flimsy wood creaked open with hardly any effort.

Inside, all was dark. Sam looked around at the tiny laundry and back kitchen, up at the narrow flight of stairs that led from the door to the upper storey, around the living room. Like most hunters, Bobby maybe the exception, Danny lived sparsely. There were stacked dishes in the kitchen sink that looked old, and newspapers scattered around the living room coffee table. Creeping upstairs, Sam found nothing more telling than a ruffled bed and a stereo that complained of _no disc _in a continual indignant blink of red light.

He moved back to the living room, and was almost startled out of his skin at the loud trill of the phone. Sam flattened himself against the wall, watching the neighbour's window as she spared Danny's house a glance, shaking her head. Sam briefly considered answering it, looking for clues as to what had happened to Danny, but decided against it. Too risky. Instead, he wandered the little house, looking for something, _anything. _Anything that could shed light on where Danny was, and how to find him.

A notebook by the phone contained nothing useful - a few numbers marked "work," another for a take-out, and two others labelled "Mick" and "garage."

Sam tapped his fingers against the walls, deliberating. His knuckles bounced along the wall under the stairs, ending in a hollow thud. He stopped. His memory skittered over Bobby's motel room in Pittsburgh, the classic hunter wall-of-weird secreted away in a closet. Crouching down, he found a tiny nub of rope, ending in a knot embedded into the floor. He picked it out, and pulled. The haphazard triangle of chip-board under the stairs swung out, and Sam groped blindly, looking for the cord for the light. He clicked it on, and smiled. Good old Danny was a hunter after all.

The little space was cluttered with all things _hunt. _A map spread out on one wall, indicating a route from Hartford to West Virginia. A stack of papers rested on a makeshift table, and Sam sifted through them eagerly. One was a bestiary of sorts on a native animal spirit that reminded Sam of his Dad. Other files delved into kaitorak, a nasty thing that apparently haunted old growth forests along the Canadian border.

A thin folder contained the methods of dispatching revenants, all familiar to Sam, with an old, curled post-it note still attached. It read : _Danny - here's an easy one to start you off solo. Be careful my friend, and happy hunting - Olivia._

Sam swallowed, remembering the torn corpse of Bobby's friend Olivia Lowry, the hunter who had trained Danny after Dean left. It seemed a hunter's end was inevitable - maybe he and Dean were reaching the end of their luck. And Danny? He pushed the thought aside. No, this was just another obstacle, that was all. He wound find Danny and sort this mess out.

Sam's hands slowed on a thin folder. Opening it, he found exactly what he would expect to find of a thoroughly researched job. Danny had done his homework. His slanting script reported _Ordog. _Sam swallowed. Despite Crowley's standing order to all things demonkind to swear off the Winchesters as their next joyride, he knew from both his own and Dean's experience that there were … less defined things in the depths of Hell than the garden-variety demon. He flicked through Danny's file on the demonic beast and fervently hoped the older hunter had dispatched this particular problem before he got there. _West Virginia. _Sam looked up at the travel map tacked to Danny's wall. It added up. Sorting through the folder system, Sam found three others that corresponded to recent dates - the only three that were anywhere near recent. He had no other option, he'd have to track Danny down through his own hunts. The closest was also the oldest - five weeks ago - just over the border in Rockford. Danny had come to the conclusion that it was a spirit possession, and collected information about how to fight that eventuality. The second, corresponding to four weeks ago, something preying on a tenement housing project in New York. According to the news clippings and reports Danny had collected, the tightly packed housing area was home to many of the city's poor, with a high volume of immigrants both legal and otherwise. The tenement was home to many children, who had begun to disappear one by one, usually after sightings of what was described as a tall, thin, bald businessman wearing a black suit and tie. Danny had added a creepy sketch of just that - a gaunt man in a black business suit, dark pits for eyes, creeping hands extending from long arms at his shoulders and back, with a young child oblivious in front of him. Danny had labelled the sketch _Slender Man, _and Sam had to agree with him. Then there was the Ordog. It was somewhere to start. Sam tracked Danny's haphazard path through the states in his head. He'd hopped the border for a small job close to home - Rockford, Illinois, for a spirit possession. Though it looked as if he had intended to return to Hartford after that, and travel from home to West Virginia hunting the Ordog. It seemed Danny had been planning the hunt when the reports from new York had taken him in that direction first - the Slender Man. From there, it was plausible he had then reasoned that he could take out the Ordog on a round-about way back to Wisconsin. Gathering up the three folders and Danny's map, Sam secured the door under the stairs and crept back out the door towards the Pontiac.


	3. Chapter 2 : Hunting the Hunter

_Rockford, Illinois - 3:23pm._

Sam cracked his neck, and stepped down from the kerb to lean wearily against the hot side of the old Pontiac. He reasoned blearily that he'd have to change up rides soon.

The curtains of the house behind him twitched, but Sam ignored the surveillance. He had what he needed from the spirit-possession victim. Danny Ellis had left Rockford.

The fifty-something man and his late wife had been involved in a car accident. Bboth had been critically injured, and briefly dead. Only the wife had stayed that way - mostly.

Sam gathered from the man's jumbled account that after the accident, when she didn't make it, he had been devastated. They had been married twenty-six years, and though he wasn't under any delusion that they had the perfect marriage, he had loved the old gal, and she him. He believed it wasn't anyone's fault - the wife apparently disagreed. The driver of the 1972 Cadillac DeVille (Sam tried not to wince as his thoughts strayed to his brother) had been on his cellphone having the third blazing argument with his girlfriend that night, causing the crash that had killed Mrs. Adalene Kinney and cost her husband a crushed tibia, resulting in permanent disuse of his left arm. First, Mr. Jed Kinney had started noticing blackouts - he'd find himself repeatedly in his study, seated at his wife's computer. Which was odd in itself, he never knew how to work the damn thing. She had been a teacher at the local community college and knew all about the technological side of life. Searches on searches about the crash, about the other driver, about the police reports. He even received a return call from an Officer Jackson, who he vaguely recalled had attended the call to the crash. The cop told him Mr. Kinney had called him the day before to ask after specifics from the crash - the skid marks, blood evidence, things like that. Mr. Kinney had no memory of any of it. After that, he received an angry letter from a lawyer who informed him that if he did not leave one Richard Darley alone, he was going to have him prosecuted for harrassment. Kinney had called the lawyer to ask what the hell he thought he was talking about, who told him that he had been making it his habit to cross town to Darley's place and berate him about the crash, about how it was all his fault and he was going to pay. Mr. Kinney argued that he hadn't driven since the crash, not with his arm the way it was now, and he hated the bus. The lawyer seemed surprised - his arm seemed to be working just fine when he threw a tire-iron through Darley's living room window.

Kinney reasoned that he was going out of his mind. Blackouts, uncharacteristic aggressive behaviour, an apparently subconscious obsession with the accident. Maybe it was losing his wife, maybe he wasn't coping as well as he thought.

Then he got a call from his late wife's best friend, scared out of her wits. She swore that Adalene had just called her, but it sounded wrong, like she was far away or there was some kind of interference. She had repeatedly tried to find out what was going on, but her friend's oddly distorted voice continued to mutter on the other end about Jed, about how this man had hurt him, how he had separated them, how she was going to make sure he paid for what he'd done, and bring them back together again. She was going to help Jed come back to her, the voice insisted - after he helped her first.

Terrified, she had called Kinney, asking what the hell was going on and anxious to make sure he was alright. Mr. Kinney began re-thinking his insanity conclusion - which was insane itself. What, he believed in ghosts now? Believed his dead wife was still around, wreaking justice on the driver of the Caddie? Come on. He told his story to a friend from his blackjack club, who had moved into an old estate sale property a few years back, after the old codger who lived there dropped dead in his lazy boy in front of the TV one night at ninety-seven years old. The old man had been a British spitfire pilot during world war two, and a few weeks after he bought up the place, he swore to God in heaven that he started seeing a soldier in the house - a full-on world war combat soldier. Thinking he'd gone nuts, he looked up old photos from the boxes left in the attic. With no family, everything in-house had been sold in the auction, including the old man's personal effects. There, looking up at him from the dusty black and white photo, was the soldier he had seen walking the halls of that very house. 19-year-old Private Gregory Higginson of West Sussex, England - the previous owner, eighty years earlier. Through a complicated remake of _Six Degrees of Separation, _his friend knew of a guy from just over the border who was interested in all this kind of stuff - he'd got hold of him in relation to the dead World War soldier disputing the ownership of his new place. First, he thought it was all a joke, you know, _Paranormal Investigators _or something. But he went out to play blackjack anyway, leaving the strange little guy to do whatever he had to. He never saw Private Higginson again. His friend had offered to call on Kinney's behalf, and he had agreed. Enter Danny Ellis.

Kinney told Sam he met Danny oh, maybe a month or two ago, through his blackjack buddy. Sure, Danny came to the house and looked around. Seemed to know quite a lot about the issue already. He was hands-down the weirdest guy Jed Kinney had ever met, and he had met some weird people having worked in anthropology in India in his younger days. In the end, Danny had sat him down and drawn the clinging spirit of Adalene out. There, his story got a bit vague, but Sam got the picture. Much like Danny's own experience, when Dean had forced the spirit of Mavis Wells to manifest, Danny had disconnected Mrs. Kinney's forced the spirit to manifest corporeally. Her link _was _Jed Kinney - it wasn't as if Danny could exactly burn the item keeping her linked to the living world. It was textbook unfinished business. Reading between the lines of Mr. Kinney's mumbled account, Sam gathered that Danny had set Adalene face to face with Jed, and he had released her spirit.

After that, no more blackouts, the pending lawsuit went away, and he was doing his best to get on with his life, minus spirit activity.

Job done, Danny had left. Sam grilled Jed for any information on where Danny might have gone, explaining honestly that he had a supernatural situation that needed Danny's expertise. Mr. Kinney was sympathetic, but as far as he knew, Danny was going back to Wisconsin. That was the last he'd heard of him, and was left with no numbers to call him on or any idea what he was planning next. Sam thanked him, and returned to the Pontiac. Dead end.

Sam sank into the seat, feeling sweaty inside his jeans and t-shirt. He pulled out his cellphone, dialling Mills.

"_Sam?"_

"Hey, I checked out Rockford, but he's already cleaned up the spirit and left. How's it going there?"

He wouldn't say _How's Dean, _or _any change,_ but Mills apparently heard it in his voice.

"_We're okay, Sam. Dean's exactly how you left him. Pete agreed to stay on for a few days, make sure he doesn't take a turn for the worse."_

Sam nodded, even though she couldn't have seen him. That was a relief.

Trying hard not to think about how Dean was doing, lying still in some kind of supernaturally-induced coma, Sam picked up the next file.

"From what I can tell, Danny went from Rockford probably back to Hartford. From there, the next hunt going by the dates was New York."

Sam didn't have to say it - it was likely to take fifteen hours and then some to drive the flagging Pontiac that far, and Dean may not have the time. He was going to have to fly. He felt an odd pang at that. Flying had never bothered him, but somehow, the fact that it certainly bothered Dean and the reality of what was happening to his brother, keeping Dean's fear of flying from being a problem in Sam's plans, made him feel hollow. Sam hastily distracted himself.

"So, anything useful in Bobby's library?"

"_Not much so far. Frank's had us sifting through dusty books of monsters, spirits, spells and myths for forty-eight hours straight. Honestly Sam, if I didn't already think Bobby was nuts …"_

Sam nodded with a sad smile. "What about Frank, any theories?"

"_He's been trying to work out what sort of thing could cause this - whatever this is. He says he doesn't know of any nasty that incapacitates its prey this way, so it's not looking like any kind of monster. He's trying to work out why Dean sent you after this one guy, probably thinking that binding magic is behind this. He says he doesn't know of anything supernatural that uses binding magic other than - what?" _

She broke off, and Sam could hear Frank's voice in the background.

"_Demons and witches. But the only binding demons care about are contracts, and it's doubtful Dean made a deal to do this to himself."_

Don't be so sure, Sam thought to himself, but he said nothing.

"_Anyway," _Mills continued, _"if someone else made this deal against Dean, he doubts this is the outcome they planned, so something must have gone south and demons should be breaking the door down."_

"To hold up their end of the bargain, I know. I've been thinking the same thing."

"_Yeah." _There was pity in the Sheriff's voice, as though she could well imagine Sam going out of his mind, wracking his brain during the long hours on the road for something, anything, to save his brother. Echoes of Dean from years before crowded out his head - _If it's the last thing I do, I'm gonna save you._

Sam shook his head again, pushing it away.

"_Frank wants to know if anything's gone missing, small personal items he says. He's checked through your stuff and couldn't find any hex bags."_

"Nope. We haven't had anything to do with witches for months, anyways. What about you, had any luck on finding Danny through his contacts?"

"_Frank isn't exactly Mr. Current Affairs when it comes to human contact. He did get in touch with a pair of hunters who worked with Danny when he was with Olivia Lowry. They had a system for contacting each other, but they can't find him, either. Frank says he'll keep looking. Hang in there, Sam."_

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I'll head over to New York now, see if I can catch Danny up on the next hunt."

"_Good luck."_

"Thanks. You too."

Sam slept on the plane from pure exhaustion - which was probably best. He could afford no downtime once he touched down in New York. The tenement building was a fair drive, so Sam wasted no time in acquiring another car - grand theft auto was not something he assumed would stick out in the Bronx, anyway.

That and he was fast running out of money. He had already taken a leaf from Dad's book and hooked up two new cards, despite the possibility of tripping any Leviathan alarms, and exercised some of his own magic with computers in a (hopefully) untraceable wifi hotspot in an airport café. But it had to be done. He had to save Dean - who had told him to find Danny. It was the only lead he had.

Sam nosed the nondescript hatchback down the narrow streets of the south side. It was a place seldom visited by Winchesters, despite the fact that there were always stories of haunted houses in the area. Dad had tended to stick to the fringe in more ways than one, hunting things that preyed on the outskirt towns and highways, rarely in the middle of a big city. Sam had never bothered to question it, and he didn't now. He was looking for the tenement, nothing more. He was looking for Morrisania, and sixteen storeys of low-income Hell.

It rose before him in russet and drab grey, and for some reason, a combination of depression and foreboding seemed to settle around his shoulders. Maybe it was the hunt, he thought as he propped Danny's folder against the steering wheel of the hatchback and looked out the rain-streaked window. A Slender Man preyed on children, hypnotising them with his swaying arms until his small victims walked right into the waiting embrace of death. Maybe it was the neighbourhood itself. For whatever reason, Sam couldn't shake the heavy feeling as he stepped out into the drizzle and looked up at the towering building, still holding the file.

Being that it was a large building with many people who may have had contact with the missing hunter, Sam had found a picture of Danny - several years old - online at the website for Georgetown University. Sam flashed to Dean and Danny's conversation at the bar several years ago about the older man's inability to gloss over the facts - turns out, Danny had been quite the upcoming journalist before Mavis Wells' murder. Though slightly younger, Danny Ellis' large grey eyes stared up at him from the photo, making the man still recognizable. That flat look of his hadn't entered them until after a career in investigative journalism was nothing more than a dim memory, it seemed.

Shouldering open the stiff outer door, Sam cast his eyes around the small foyer. Several of the mail pigeonholes to his right were cracked open, and someone had kicked the bottom sheet of glass in the front door. A young man with an unnaturally pale complexion regarded Sam from beneath an oversized baseball cap.

Danny's file listed several people reported to have either seen the Slender Man, or their children had before they disappeared. Sam knew that victims of the Slender Man were almost never found again. Disappeared, presumed dead. But if the sightings and disappearances had stopped, it was more than likely that Danny had dispatched the monster and left for West Virginia, intending to circle back to Wisconsin. He had never made it.

Sam squinted down at the first name on the file, and corresponded it with the running numbers on the doors. He squashed himself into the elevator, slightly apprehensive at the condition of the thing when the steel grill slammed shut, boxing him in.

He stepped out on the 7th floor, casting his eyes down the hall in both directions. Hiphop music pounded from somewhere to his left, and he set off in the other direction, his eyes brushing past the numbers on the doors.

Stopping at 1410, he knocked.

After a moment, a small Vietnamese woman answered, inky eyes gazing up at Sam.

"Hi," he said, more brightly than he felt. "I'm wondering if you can help me, I'm looking for this man."

He held up Danny's university paper photo in front of the little woman. He had no idea what pretext Danny had used on the hunt, and was wary about raising suspicion by getting his cover story wrong, so he simply bypassed it. The woman's eyes wandered from the picture in Sam's hand to his face. She said nothing.

"Please, it's important I find him, he's a friend and he might be in trouble."

That was no less than the truth.

A female voice enquired something in Vietnamese from behind the woman, and she turned behind the door, answering in the same. A moment, and a teenage girl appeared next to her.

"What you want?" she asked, her English vaguely accented.

"I'm looking for a friend, he's missing and he might be in trouble. I know he came here, and I'm trying to find him. You seen this guy?"

The girl looked down at the picture of Danny. She glanced at Sam, then turned back to the woman at her side, speaking softly in Vietnamese. The older woman moved away, disappearing into the dim apartment. The girl grasped the door, opening it a little more to reveal half her body.

"My mother don't speak English," she said. "Yeah, I seen him. While ago."

"How long ago?" Sam asked.

The girl shrugged, long silky black hair slithering over her shoulders.

"Don't know, maybe month."

"Do you know what he was doing here?" Sam asked.

The girl dropped her eyes to the floor, pushing her hand into the pocket of her jeans and shrugging.

"It was crazy."

"What was?" Sam pressed, trying to duck to catch her eye.

"He say there was something taking the kids. Police, they say it was some stalker, some paedophile took them. They never found him. That guy, he come and he say it was something else. He say the kids saw it."

Sam pursed his lips, making a decision. Carefully, he removed Danny's creepy sketch from the file.

"This?" he asked, holding it up for her.

The girl swallowed, and nodded.

"You ever see it?" Sam asked.

"No, but my sister, she was one was taken. She said she saw a skinny old man in the building, just before. That night, she gone."

"I'm sorry," Sam said. And he meant it.

The girl gazed up at him with dark eyes.

"So, you saw Danny, and he thought this thing was responsible for what happened to your sister and the other kids. What then?"

"I saw him again, one other time. He come back to tell my mother the skinny man was gone, but so was my sister. He say he was sorry that he couldn't get her back, but the skinny man won't be hurting any more kids again."

Sam nodded, heart heavier than ever. He could well imagine Danny's situation, standing where he was with his heart in his mouth, telling the mother that he couldn't save her daughter. But from the sister's account, it sounded like Danny had dispatched the Slender Man.

"Where else did they see this thing?" he asked.

"That red hair man from the fourteenth floor, his son got taken by the skinny man too. He saw him."

Sam was taken aback at that. It was common adults could see a Slender Man, even looking straight at it. It was more common that the children saw it, or dreamed about it, right before it stole them. He smiled at the girl.

"Thanks, I'll ask him about my friend. I'm sorry about your sister."

The girl nodded, and closed the door.

Opting out of the questionable elevator, Sam ducked into the stairwell, taking the little cement steps three at a stride. Graffiti coated the cement and whitewash, and he could distinctly smell piss from somewhere near his boots.

He climbed out at the fourteenth floor slightly out of breath, again scanning the corridor. Two old women talking at one of the apartment doors cast him a glance before they both hurried inside. Sam had no idea if it was him or the tenants were still rattled by the Slender Man, and right then he didn't care. Fourteenth floor - he scanned the doors, matching Danny's file. He found what he was looking for, and knocked.

"Yeah?" Came a man's voice from inside.

"Uh, hello, I was hoping to talk to you about your son," Sam said, raising his voice and edging closer to the door.

"Already talked to the police," the voice answered.

"I'm not a cop, I'm looking for my friend. He was here looking for the thing that took the kids."

The door jerked open, caught by the chain.

"Thing?" the same voice asked, belonging to the spike of red hair and pale blue eye of the man behind the door.

"Yeah, this," Sam replied, holding up Danny's sketch.

The eye scanned the picture, before the door closed briefly and the chain rattled loose. The door opened, revealing a man Sam guessed to be in his late thirties, wearing a white singlet and worn dark jeans.

His eyes travelled over Sam, snagging on the picture in his hand.

"Why d'you want to know about that?" he asked.

"My friend was here looking for it. He's missing, and could be in trouble. Did you talk to this guy?"

Sam held up the picture of Danny.

The man stared at the picture a moment, frowning.

"That's not going to work," he said. "Tell me more about him."

"Uh, his name is Danny, he was here looking into the missing kids. Uh, he's small, about this tall. He would have wanted to know where you saw this thing, asked a lot of questions about the disappearances of the kids. He's a nice guy, just … all business."

The red-haired man nodded.

"Danny, yeah. I remember him, poking around. Wanted to know about the thing what's supposed to have taken the kids. So?"

"I talked to a girl down stairs who said you saw it."

"Pham's daughter tell you that?" he asked.

"The Vietnamese girl from the seventh floor."

"Yeah. The mother doesn't speak a scrap of English. Her sister got taken too."

"Right," Sam confirmed, watching as the man's pale eyes slid over his face, but refused to make eye contact. The difficulties placing Danny from his photo, the abrupt manner of speaking, the aversion to eye contact - the man's ability to see the Slender Man was starting to gel in Sam's head. Children could see the monster because their brains were different from adults - neurotypical adults, anyway.

"I need to know what happened to Danny. He was supposed to be going back to Wisconsin, and he never made it. I'm trying to find him."

The man tilted his head. "Okay."

"So, you saw this thing, before it took your son. Where did you see it?"

The man nodded down the hall. "I saw it down there, out on the street. Me and Obi - he was my son - we was playing out there with a cricket bat I found in the boiler room. There was fog, but I saw it. There was other kids out there too, and this thing, whatever it was, it was just standing there watching them. It saw me looking, and it took off."

"Danny came to see you after your son was taken?"

"Yeah. Asked lots of questions, wanted to know where I'd seen it, like you. I told him the spots others had seen it too, where the kids were when they were last seen. I suppose he went after it."

Sam's heart rate quickened. "Do you know if he got it?"

The man shrugged. "He came back after a few days. He looked …" he frowned in concentration, twisting his face into a tight knot. "Looked kind of drained, like something had been taken out of him, maybe. Don't know what. He said that Obi was gone, so was the little Pham girl and the others. The children weren't coming back. I asked him what happened to the thing, because no matter what the cops say, it wasn't a man. He said he killed it."

"He killed it?" Sam repeated.

"Yeah. Good thing, too. Creepy sucker."

"So, he left after that?"

"I never saw him after that."

"Have there been any more sightings, or disappearances after Danny left?"

"No. That's why I believe him when he said he killed it. If he hadn't, more kids would've gone missing, maybe more people would've seen it. But it just disappeared when he did."

Sam nodded, relieved. So, it looked like Danny had been here, had hunted and killed the Slender Man, but not before the tendrils had taken some of the life force out of him, the same way they were said to consume their young victims. Looks like the effect could be used on adults, too, under attack. Perhaps the spectral monster simply preferred younger kills for their stronger life force and less physical resistance.

Sam looked back up at the man at the door.

"Thanks. I'm sorry, about Obi."

The man nodded. "Hey, I hope you find Danny. He helped us here, killed that thing took the kids. I hope he's okay."

"Me too. Thanks for your help."

Sam ran what he knew over in his head.

Danny had made it from Rockford to the Bronx. He'd been seen here maybe a month ago. The Slender Man appeared to have been a challenge for the small hunter, and it had taken its piece out of him. But from the red haired man's description of events, between Danny and the monster, it was Danny who had walked out alive. Because he was right, Sam thought as three boys who looked around eight burst through the door in his wake and spilled yelling into the street - if Danny had lost the match, the Slender Man would have stuck to his hunting ground. Victims still abounded, he thought as he watched the boys tear down the street with a smile. No one had actually seen Danny leave alive, but if the red haired man was right, it was a Danny wounded from the hunt who had come to see him, and report that the threat was gone. The only way to be sure was to track Danny to his next hunt, and verify he had turned up alive in West Virginia around three weeks ago.

Sam leaned against the hatchback, thinking. It'd take him ten hours, more or less, to drive to West Virginia. He could theoretically fly, but something warned against it. It was risky considering the Leviathan sword hanging over his head, and the consideration of money Sam didn't have. If he floored it, he might make it in eight.

He nodded, throwing the Slender Man file onto the passenger seat and folding himself into the car. He deliberately did not move to pick up the slim file that dealt with what was before him - the Ordog. _Please, Danny, _he thought. _Tell me you took this out too before I get to Virginia. _

Gunning the tinny engine of the hatchback, Sam left New York.


	4. Chapter 3 : Missing friends

_White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia - 11:55am_

It was an ironic name, considering. In a blur of exhaustion and mounting anxiety when he had rolled into the town in the small hours of the previous morning, Sam had wondered if the Ordog had thought so too. He supposed it didn't matter what it thought, so long as it was long banished back to its cauldron deep in Hell by Danny Ellis.

Sam had absolutely no desire to face something like the Ordog right now. Something that wore the very face of Hell.

It had been a frenzied drive, somehow feeling like hellhounds were on his tail. He didn't know if it was the awareness that Dean was still unconscious and by now had to be hooked up to an IV back in Lincoln, while Mills and Frank sifted through Bobby's library probably in vain, and Pete dropped in when he could to monitor Dean. Or that he had travelled more in the past few days than even he was used to. Or the possible presence of concentrated hellspawn at large in this town. Or that he was getting nowhere - if he couldn't find Danny in West Virginia, he had no idea where the hunter could have gone, or what had happened to him. If he wasn't in West Virginia, it was likely Danny couldn't be found. It wasn't just because Dean's last instruction had been to find Danny and the hunter was his only clue as to how to help his brother, either, Sam realized. He had been following Danny's hunts, learning at least something about what he had faced, the people he had met, and found he was worried about Danny himself. In a way, Danny Ellis reminded Sam of he and Dean years ago, when they just hunted, before Hell for both of them and the damage that had caused. Mom and Dad were gone, sure, but Bobby and Cas were still there. Ellen, Ash and Jo, Rufus, Travis. They still carried on the family business - hunting things, saving people. Back when the world was black and white, and their biggest problems were hunting down monsters, their reward saving innocent people.

He had no desire to find Danny torn to pieces by the Ordog or something else like it that crept through the night. He didn't want the awareness of another dead hunter on his mind. But if the trail proved cold, he had only the last resorts. He could hack the DMV and possibly trace Danny's truck, or pretext as a federal cop claiming one Daniel Ellis was wanted for questioning, put out an APB. But he knew Danny still retained his ties to the civilian world. The guy still had a home and a job, friends and neighbours who worried about him. Sam was reluctant to involve him with the wrong side of the law any sooner than was inevitable for a hunter.

Sam's dreams were uniformly dominated by one thing - he drowned in flames. It was fading, but never far away. It was the Hell his soul carried with him, that could never be completely cooled again.

He had jerked into wakefulness, his skin screaming. He sat up as much as he could, rubbing at his face. The unfamiliar motel room looked back at him. It was unusual to risk a motel these days, but Sam was aware he was in bad need of a shower, and he was far too tired to be vigilant alone in a squat. He needed to shower, and as much as he hated it, sleep for a few hours before tracking down Danny's final hunt - the Ordog.

Sam rolled off the bed and sloped into the bathroom. His reflection looked like hell, and he remembered the red haired tenement resident's description of Danny the last time he saw the hunter - _Looked kind of drained, like something had been taken out of him maybe. _The Slender Man drained life force, and right now, that seemed to describe how Sam felt pretty well.

He stepped under the stringing spray of the shower, thinking.

According to Danny's file, the Ordog had been possessing a young Spanish woman, using her to dupe its victims into deadly bets, ensnaring their souls for the Ordog's cauldron in the depths of Hell, bodies torn from life. Sam felt like simply showing up at the house in question, knocking on the door and hoping Danny had dispatched the Ordog.

He intended to scan the area for any continued demon activity, anything pointing to the continued inhabitation of the Ordog, police and news reports. But he was less ready to delay than he thought - something was coming. He felt inexplicably as if he was running out of time.

Washed and dressed, Sam sat outside the local café reading a newspaper. The stories ranged from local developments threatening the park to a proposed widening of the interstate 64. No eviscerated bodies, it seemed. There was nothing in local news to alert Sam, and nothing on the police blotter save road accidents, domestic disputes and a few people-on-premises. No demonic creatures bent on condemning human souls to the very depths of Hell.

Sam scratched at his jaw, thinking recklessly. So far, he had been several steps behind Danny, following up his hunts long after the man himself had taken care of the problem and moved on. It stood to reason the Ordog had met a similar fate. He doubted Danny had anything on hand to actually kill such a thing, but exorcism was almost as good - banishment, at least for a time, cessation of killings and liberation for the host.

Sam folded the paper, checking Ruby's knife was well secured beneath his jacket. He was reasonably assured the knife would work on the Ordog, if they met.

Consulting Danny's file, Sam drove the beaten Bronx hatchback to the possessed woman's address. He stopped outside, eyeing the property warily.

Several chimes sounded in the faint wind that passed by the house, and a clothing line of whites flapped slowly by the porch. The house was quiet. Sam tossed Danny's file - bearing a classical drawing of the Ordog in its hideous black-faun shape - onto the passenger seat and, taking a deep breath, got out of the car.

On the porch of the white weatherboard house, a grey cat watched Sam through lazily slitted green eyes. He looked back at it, on edge.

The door swung open, and a stunningly beautiful, slender young woman with long, soft dark hair and dusky skin stood on the stoop, gazing up at Sam with the dark, soft eyes of a doe. "Yes?"

"Hi, uh, I'm looking for someone, he may have called here about three weeks ago, Danny Ellis?"

The woman cast her large eyes around the yard, before taking Sam by the hand and drawing him gently into the dim interior of the house. She closed the door, turning back to Sam.

"Come in, please. You are looking for Danny?"

"He's missing," Sam replied, looking around the room.

The lamps were draped, and everywhere around him Spanish-inspired religious art cluttered the space. A graceful Madonna surrounded by dried red roses sat behind a candle at the door. The woman herself wore a light black scarf, a red and black rosary around her neck.

"Sit, please," the woman gestured to the couch, laden with fringed rugs. "I will make some tea."

She disappeared from the room, leaving Sam to look around him. Something about the place spoke of peace and faith, a combination that he found comforting. The breathtaking beauty of the woman who lived here made sense in regard to the Ordog, and Sam wondered how she came to be possessed by the demonic monster.

The woman returned, handing Sam a china teacup and saucer.

"I'm Mireia," she said. "And yes, Danny was here two or three weeks or so ago. Why are you looking for him?"

"I need his help," Sam replied, surprised at his own honesty, even though he had been uncharacteristically open throughout the whole hunt for Danny, lacking the time or energy to be coy. "He was supposed to be home weeks ago, and no one's seen him since."

Mireia cradled the teacup in graceful hands.

"How can I help you?"

Sam edged forward on the couch.

"I need some information," Sam said gently. "I've been trying to track him down by following his trail."

Sam took a breath. "You were possessed?" He asked gently. "The Ordog?"

Mireia nodded.

"Yes, Danny said that was the devil's name. I never knew what it called itself."

"What happened to the Ordog?" Sam asked, muscles tense.

"I don't know. Danny came, he called the devil out and I don't know what happened to it after that. When I woke up as myself again, it was Danny holding me and telling me everything was going to be alright, that the devil was gone."

A faint smile curved her lips, remembering her saviour.

Sam nodded. "So, Danny performed an exorcism on you?"

"Yes, he called the devil out."

"And then?"

"When I woke up everything was confused. I had seen only flashes, bits and pieces of the terrible things the devil had done wearing my face. I could feel its black soul inside me, but I couldn't escape it or force it out. I don't know how Danny did it, and maybe I shouldn't know, but he made everything alright again. He gave me this."

Mireia reached under her shawl, and resting against her fingers was the pentagram anti-possession charm tattooed into his own chest, given to him and Dean first by Bobby in a very similar tiny silver charm years before. Unexpectedly, his throat abruptly closed. Horrified, Sam swallowed hard and blinked at the floor. Mireia smiled at him.

"Danny said I would be safe, that the devil was gone and couldn't take me again. I hugged him and thanked him over and over for saving my life, my soul. Then he left, and I have not seen him since then."

A strange sensation was settling over Sam. He was worried as hell, everything was turned around. He had barely slept for days, chasing Danny's trail across seven states, fearing more and more that he would either never find the hunter, or find him dead. All the while Dean lay so still, with only Frank and Mills - as well as they meant - to watch over him. He needed help. Help Sam couldn't seem to find. And now here he was in Virginia, end of the road, and all he had was a grateful and liberated woman. No Danny. At least minus one Ordog, he thought miserably.

"Do you know where he went?" Asked Sam hopelessly.

"He said he heard rumours of people being injured in a logging mill. He said maybe another dark thing was there, hunting people as he hunted them."

Sam's head snapped up.

"When was this?"

"Just before he left here, maybe two, three weeks ago. He did say he intended to return to his home, but someone needed to look into the mill. Someone like him, someone who sent devils back to the dark."

"Did he say where this mill was, or what was going on there?"

Mireia frowned, thinking back. "Colorado," she said slowly. "He said it was somewhere in Colorado, because it was a long way from his home."

Heat flashed through Sam - the trail wasn't cold. But Colorado? Even as the crow flies it was five states away. He had already established Dean needed help, but maybe so did he. Who was there left to call anymore? Sam sighed heavily, raking his hands over his face, through his hair. Mireia watched him sympathetically.

"You said you need his help. Do you know of devils, too?"

Sam shook his head. "It's my brother. He's in trouble, the medic doesn't know what's wrong with him. Danny's a friend. That was the last thing he said to me, _find Danny."_

Mireia nodded. "You will find him. He can help you."

"I hope so," Sam replied brittlely.

Mireia edged forward and to Sam's surprise, wrapped her soft, gentle hands around his.

"Don't lose faith," she said. "Find Danny, and he can help your brother the same way he helped me. If he is missing as you say, maybe he needs your help as much as you need his."

Sam nodded, not trusting himself to anything else.

"A mill in Colorado," Mireia said, somehow sensing his need to focus on the task, a raft he was holding onto to keep himself afloat. "I think he said there had been strange accidents, and people disappearing. He left here about two weeks ago, and he was driving an old truck. If you are like him, you will find him. It will be alright."

The moment Sam stepped out of the hatchback in the motel parking lot, his cellphone buzzed. Sam answered the unfamiliar number.

"_Sam, it's Pete, Jodi's friend."_

"What's wrong? Is it Dean? Is he okay?"

"_Slow down, it's okay, Dean's still okay. I just thought I better call. Sam, his temperature is down even more than it was. We're packing him up with blankets and heat packs, but it's not a good sign. His body is shutting down. We've had him on IV fluids, but there's only so long he can stay this way without some more aggressive intervention. I don't think it's a good idea to keep him here if this gets any worse - you're going to have to have him admitted. I don't want to scare you, he's not on death's door here, and the decline seems to be slow, but I thought I better let you know there's been a change in his condition."_

Sam had sunk back against the hatchback, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut. Dean's body shutting down. No.

"Okay, thanks Pete. For letting me know. Can you stay with him a little longer?"

"_Yeah, I don't want to leave him without some kind of medical help with his temperature down like this. I'll call you if anything changes. You had any luck?"_

"I'm in West Virginia, the last place I knew Danny went. There's a woman here who said Danny was heading out to Colorado about two weeks ago. I gotta give it a shot, it's the only lead I got."

"_Well I hope this guy knows something we don't, for Dean's sake. Good luck, Sam."_

"Yeah, me too. Thanks Pete, for everything."

Sam clicked the phone off and drew a deep breath. Dean was dying in Nebraska, without him. Pete had been diplomatic, but the eventuality was clear. Unless they found something to stop this, Dean's body was going to continue to shut down until it stopped completely. And Sam had no idea where his brother's soul was heading from there. The very thought of Dean going back to Hell sent fire through Sam's veins, forcing him into action. He may well have no choice but to live with Hell every day, but there was no way he was letting Dean do the same.

He threw his bag and Danny's files into the hatchback and drove like hell itself was on his tail for the airport.

_Grand Scheme lumber mill - Wilderness outside Bailey, Colorado. 9:40am._

In a workplace like the old lumber mill, accidents were simply an occupational hazard. Sometimes it was a machinery malfunction, but more often than not human error - stupid oversights taken by logging crews. Thus, mill foreman Thom Henley wasn't too surprised with the first couple of accidents on site. First, some Einstein dogger not watching what he was doing gave the ok to the crane operator to swing a load directly into his work-mate's head. The latter wasn't seriously injured - seeing stars and talking nonsense maybe (kept asking what the hell he'd had to drink) but other than being the butt of every joke on site that day, the idiot was sent home via the ER to check out a mild concussion and sentenced to nothing more than rest and a distinct absence of alcohol. All the guys who worked on the project were local, and thus it was noticed quickly when the abstaining dogger never turned up for work. He'd been missing ever since. The second guy lost two fingertips to a trim saw, reportedly startled by the knockoff horn. Again, he was patched up and given a few weeks paid leave due to workplace injury. He was never seen again. Then there was the truck driver who inexplicably managed to leave the manual brake off, causing the truck to roll downhill and crash into a tree, sending the windscreen shattering into his face. He'd been cut up some, but again, the injuries were relatively minor, and apart from the incident meriting investigation by on-site occupational health and safety, the driver wasn't badly hurt. He never showed up for work the next day, and his wife and four kids had no idea what had happened to him. He was still missing. Then only recently, there had been two surveyors who had been scouting, and had somehow ended up under a load - the grappling hook gave way, dumping a load of chip wood onto the pair. They were both a bit banged up, some cuts and bruises, but nothing life-threatening - until they went missing, too. It was beginning to get ridiculous, Henley thought to himself. Not like he believed in that sort of thing, but it was like a curse of bad luck or something.

Thus, he was even less surprised when he saw the suit, and one of the floor staff pointing him out. The guy was tall, young, with a serious sort of expression. Henley was getting a headache.

"I know what this is about," Henley informed him before the corporate monkey could open his mouth. "One too many screw ups, I get it. But the on-site safety guys have already looked into it, and the driver swore he didn't leave that brake off. What can I say."

The suit stared at him a moment, as if not quite sure what he was talking about.

"Right," he said, before Henley could devote much more thought to the pause. "But you know how it is, we got to look into these things. People have been hurt, there's got to be a review. Plus several of your staff are now missing, foreman."

"What's that got to do with workplace safety?" Asked Henley.

"You don't think it's related?" challenged the suit.

"I … well okay, it's kind of weird that the guys involved in the accidents are missing, but that could be for all kinds of reasons. The driver especially could be facing some heat for endangering people, leaving that brake off."

"But he maintains he didn't?"

"So he says, but come on. He's just trying to avoid taking the blame for the accident. It wouldn't surprise me if he'd taken off, afraid it was going to get legal."

The suit frowned at him, pushing his hands into his pockets.

"Most of the people who work here are local, right?"

"Yeah."

"Don't you think it's odd that local workers would just up and take off without a word to their families or friends, right after a series of freak accidents, on the suspicion that _maybe _they might be facing some heat over the incidents?"

Henley clenched his jaw, puckering his mouth into a tight spot that he knew the floor staff laughed at behind his back. He was nothing if not forthright.

"What are you getting at?"

A quick half-smile tugged at one corner of the suit's mouth, green eyes travelling over the sedately moving floor.

"It could be sabotage."

"Sabotage?" Henley yelped, genuinely surprised. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The mill is responsible for land clearing, correct? Felling the forests? Ever wonder why people chain themselves to trees, foreman?"

"Come on," Henley said sceptically. "We're not a huge industrial company here. It's not like we're threatening natural resources on the scale that attracts nut jobs and greenies. Grand Scheme is a comparatively small operation - we provide local jobs, invest in local economy. We've done the PR. I hardly think this is the sort of operation attractive to extremists."

"It still has to be considered, given the disappearances."

Henley crossed his arms.

The suit's eyes snagged on the floor a moment, before he asked "seen anyone unfamiliar around here recently? Asking questions?"

"No, not that I remember."

"No one on site that wasn't a member of your staff?"

Henley tipped his head to one side. There was something … the suit's green eyes were suddenly boring into him, and Henley had the strange impression that he wasn't getting the full story here.

"There was one guy," he said slowly. "PI, came around on behalf of one of the guys families, the machine operator who slipped his fingertips. Said he'd been hired to look into his disappearance."

"What did this guy look like?" Snapped the suit, eyes sharp on Henley, who frowned.

"I don't know, just some guy. Smaller than me, thirty-five maybe, dark hair. What difference does it make?"

"How long ago?"

"What?"

"How long ago did this man come to see you?"

There was steel in the suit's tone, impatience, urgency. Henley's frown deepened.

"Uh, maybe a week ago. Why?"

"Have there been any more accidents since this man spoke to you?"

Henley was silent a moment.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "The truck driver, he went missing a few days after the PI came poking around."

The suit went suddenly pale. Henley was just getting more and more confused.

"What the hell is going on?" He asked. When the suit was not forthcoming, green eyes flickering in thought, expression drawn in something that looked strangely like bridled panic, Henley pressed on. "Let me get this straight. You think that the run of bad luck and smalltime accidents around here recently have been due to some crackpot greenie posing as a civil investigator in order to gain access to my site and sabotage the mill? For some kind of environmental crusade?"

"We're not sure," replied the suit faintly.

"Yeah, well I am. No one was seen on site on any of the days the accidents happened. No one was seen interfering with the trim saw, or the trucks, or the cranes or any of the machinery that was involved. Not that investigator, not anybody. And for damn sure no one shoved that machine operator's fingers into anything. It was his own stupid fault. Now, I don't know why any of the guys involved have disappeared, or anything else about it. All I know is we have gone through all the proper channels through on-site safety, given everyone a workshop on safety procedures and threatened disciplinary action and ongoing investigation if there are any more screw-ups. So -"

Henley's words were cut off in a loud mechanical roar that startled both men. Voices called out from the corner of the floor, and wordlessly Henley made a dash for the site, the suit on his heels.

One of the machine operators was on the floor, hard-hat rolling away, grasping one leg.

"For fuck sake!" He yelled at the forklift driver, who stood dressed in a high-visibility vest and a stunned expression next to the lift.

"Oh man, I am so sorry," he said as his companion groaned and flopped back against the concrete. "For real, it wouldn't stop! Some kind of mechanical thing, I don't know, but I couldn't stop the damn thing. Shit, are you hurt?"

"Oh nah, I'm just fine, my fucking knee's dislocated!"

"Great, just great," snapped Henley. "You, go get the first aid guys. And you," he rounded on the forklift driver, who had gone white. "What the hell were you doing?"

"I tell you boss, for real, I couldn't control the lift. It went apeshit," the driver said, holding up his hands. "I saw him there but I couldn't stop it."

"What the hell is going on here?" Demanded Henley, at the end of his rope.

"That's a really good question," said the suit's voice softly from behind him.

Sam left the sprawling lumber mill at a quick stride, tugging the tie loose from around his neck. There was saw grit in his eyes and throat, and his shoulders and neck were tight with worry. He'd just seen it with his own eyes - the supernatural was still going strong at Grand Scheme mill. Too many freak accidents, all of them related to the mill and its employees. He was willing to bet the operator with the dislocated knee was about to be next in the long line of disappearances, unless he did something about it.

Worse, Danny Ellis had been seen, a week or so ago, and obviously on the hunt. Pretexting as a PI, hired by a victim's family to investigate the circumstances that led to his unexplained disappearance. Nice. It was a cover that was unlikely to be suspicious, and allowed Danny to ask all the questions he wanted. He had obviously got as far as Sam had - identifying the strange run of accidents, resulting in minor injuries to workers, who later disappeared without a trace. He'd questioned the foreman, and presumably the families of the missing loggers. What conclusion had he reached, Sam wondered. More the question, what had happened to him? If Danny had been here on a hunt and the accidents and disappearances were still ongoing, it could mean one of two things. One, Danny was on the hunt at that very moment, out there somewhere in the wilderness on the trail of the thing responsible, or two - something had gone very wrong. As much as he hated to admit it, the latter seemed more likely to Sam. Though he didn't know Danny as well as Dean did, the guy was a hunter, it was unlikely he would have gone after this thing alone if two more people had already been injured, one disappeared. Then there was his neighbour back in Hartford who said Danny had seemed rushed and stressed, and was several weeks overdue to return home. His phone had been ringing off the hook, and judging by the numbers on the pad beside Danny's phone, it was one or more of his jobs looking for him. Then there was the Slender Man. The red-haired man from the tenement had described Danny as supernaturally wounded, in a way. Some of his life-force had obviously been taken by the Slender Man in the monster's last effort to defend itself. Then there was the Ordog - what price had Danny paid to the demon to send it back to its cauldron?

The picture forming in his head wasn't good. For whatever reason, Danny had been on a relentless tour of hunt after hunt, taking the hits that came with the job, but pushing on. He knew from personal experience that kind of kamikaze run led right into trouble - sooner or later, Danny would slip up. From pain, injury, exhaustion or recklessness, he'd stumble, and when he did, the hunter became the hunted. It looked like his number was up. Funny, Sam thought with a grim smile as he headed out the mill's chain-link gates and back to the rented ford parked a discreet distance away - Danny was sounding more like Dean than ever.

Whatever it was preying on the mill, it was still here, and Danny was nowhere to be found. Probably due to his own mounting desperation, Sam was ridiculously unprepared. He shuddered to think what his dad would have said. He shook the thought out of his mind the moment it formed - John Winchester was dead, and Sam was in no mood to struggle with his proverbial ghost right now. So he was unprepared, so he was tired and jetlagged and worried and alone. None of that mattered while Dean was back in Nebraska, slowly slipping away, his body getting colder with each passing day Sam spent zigzagging the country looking for one wayward hunter. He folded himself awkwardly into the car, leaned against the seats and drew a deep breath, gritty eyes closed. This was crazy. What was he supposed to do, dive headfirst into the wilderness as he suspected Danny had done, without due diligence done in research? With no idea what it was he faced, how to kill it, or how it was likely to hunt him in return? He was so close yet so far - he knew Danny had been here, but had never left Bailey. The weird accidents and disappearances at the mill continued. Sam was almost sure this had been Danny's final stop and he was still here, one way or the other. _Dead or alive, _whispered a voice in his head. _Probably dead. Just like Dean. _Sam's throat burned, choking him with ash and sulphur, flames licking against the surface of his soul, searing, agonizing. The walls of the cage reared up around him, blood-soaked iron and incomprehensible power of the original source of all life. All around him roared red and black, and something moved in the darkness toward his tiny presence, something huge, bristling with primeval power, eyes of living darkness fixed on him, hatred leeching into his soul like venom. _Sam …_

Sam gripped the steering wheel, feeling the pull of the old scar. _Not real_, he told himself. _Get a grip, Sam. _He remembered his shock and pain as Dean dug his thumb into the then fresh wound, grounding Sam in reality. Dean … he had to help Dean.

Sam snapped his eyes open to the cool light and green trees of Colorado. Two loggers in hard-hats and high visibility vests kicked through the dust outside the gate, talking to one another. He blinked. He was sweating, his whole body shaking.

_Smooth, _he thought. Not only was he exhausted, clueless, alone and in a rush, he was also completely losing his mind. Perfect way to enter the hunt.

He drove back to the motel, running what he knew over in his mind, building on it what he was going to do now. So. He had some pretty solid facts - Danny was still in Colorado, either on the hunt, or victim to it. Whatever it was he had been hunting was still praying on the mill. Sam almost smiled to himself, remembering Dad's advice - figure out what you're up against. It was hunter 101 after all. Presumably, Danny had at least some idea of what it was he was hunting before he went after it. He doubted anyone who had worked with Olivia Lowry, or any of the other hunters who knew of Danny, would have done less. So, it stood to reason that to save time on his own research, it was a better idea to find where Danny had been staying and pick up where the older hunter had left off. He pulled into the motel lot slowly, thinking. Whatever this was, it was connected to the mill. Either it was a vengeful spirit with some beef with its former workmates, or it was less connected to the mill than it was to the forest. The loggers were encroaching on the forest, felling the trees. Maybe something territorial in the woodlands was less than impressed with trespassers on its turf. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. It made no sense for a vengeful spirit to superficially injure its victims, pushing them away from the mill, then disappearing them without a trace. No, it seemed almost as if this was a hunting technique - wound the prey, separating it from its greater numbers but not alerting it to any significant danger, then stalk it until it was alone, wounded and unaware, then attack. Even the disappearances made sense in this theory. No bodies had ever been found, and the whole thing remained ambiguous. If there had been bodies, the mill would have been shut down, or worse for whatever hunted in the woods, it would have attracted greater numbers of trespassers who knew what they were up against. Probably more than it could defend against. No, by this technique, whatever this was, it could pick the loggers off one by one without ever tripping any alarms. Stopping the functioning of the mill eventually as well as punishing the trespassers at the same time.

With this in mind, Sam thought as he stabbed the motel key into the door, it was likely to be some kind of monster. Something connected to the local forest, something that hunted. Something intelligent. The forest … Sam tried to put himself in Danny's shoes as he washed the drying sweat off his face with bracingly cold water. If Danny had reached the same conclusion, he would likely keep close to the forest, hoping to catch sight of whatever it was entering or leaving the mill, keeping an eye on the loggers at risk as well as determining if this thing was corporeal - a vital piece of information on its dispatch. Plus, if he was planning on heading out to hunt it on its own turf in the wilderness, he would need a base. Somewhere close but relatively safe to marshal his weapons, and provide a fallback point if injured. Sam detoured to the reception desk, smiling in what he hoped was a relatively polite way at the clerk.

"Help you?" the thirty-something man enquired from behind a magazine.

"Thinking of doing some hiking," Sam replied. "Do you know of anywhere to hole up in the wilderness? Hunter's cabins, stuff like that?"

"Sure," answered the clerk, slapping the magazine on the desk and leaning over to snatch up a folded tourist map. "Out by the off-road to the mill, a few hundred yards into the woods, there's a bunch of hunting and fishing cabins for use by hikers, hunters and the like. They're usually quiet in the off-season though. Might be lucky."

He marked the little rectangles indicating the cabins and handed the map to Sam with a smile.

Luck, Sam thought. Just what he needed.

It was bordering on dusk when Sam parked off the off-road to the mill and set off into the wilderness. It was less than ideal, but the sense of urgency, of running out of time, wouldn't let him wait. Besides, there had been no reports of any of the numerous hikers, hunters or fisherman that entered the wilderness every year going missing. It looked like whatever this was, it had no problem with the humans who entered for natural purposes. To a supernatural monster or spirit connected to the wilderness and the forests, Sam reasoned that hunting, hiking and fishing was viewed as simply the natural order of things. Felling the forests and feeding them into the lumber mill however, wasn't.

He had set off with some small provisions - food, water, their first aid kit and weapons, a blanket he had swiped from the motel, a heavier coat, cellphone, flashlights. Besides, he told himself, he wasn't setting out on the hunt. Not yet. If he was right, Danny had set up his own camp in one of the hunting cabins, disused according to the motel clerk during the off-season. If he could find Danny's base, it was likely he could find some clues left behind as to what Danny was hunting. Possibly also clues as to what had happened to Danny himself. _Please, _he incited the powers that be through the dappled canopy of the forest, painting Sam in shafts of late afternoon sun. _Please don't let me walk in and find his body._

The woods around him were quiet, the bustle from the mill down the off-road not reaching this far. The assortment of pine, spruce and fir spotted with pale aspen stood still in the sun. Beneath his feet, the undergrowth was dry. He squinted at the map the clerk had marked, gauging the distance from the road to the first of the scattering of cabins. It wouldn't take him long, especially if he picked up the pace. Shifting the duffel bag of weapons against his palm, Sam quickened his pace, heading north. He spread his awareness out to the environment around him, but focused on the job at hand. He planned to check out the cabins, looking for any sign of Danny, and hole up there for the night. Depending on what happened, he was prepared to hunt by day or night depending on what he was up against. Or to return to the motel and figure out the next step if there was no evidence of Danny, to research further on his own. He pushed down the rushed feeling that always seemed to be skittering around his heart. Dean was fine - Frank and Mills were there, and Pete hadn't called with any bad news. Yes Dean was in danger, but Sam was doing his best to obey his brother's instruction and find Danny. Sam had to believe Mireia that Danny would know what to do.

Just over an hour's hike brought Sam to the first of the cabins. They were simple, log wood ironically enough, with tin roofing and sagging shelters. Not a camper-van or four-wheel-drive in sight. All the better. Still, Sam slowed his pace as he came up on the clearing, checking his Taurus was still tucked into his waistband.

He flicked his eyes around the small clearing, counting three huts. There was no sound but the repeated call of some bird off in the wilderness. Sam moved forward warily, pushing the door of the first hut. It swung open without resistance, offering nothing inside save a few pine-cones, a scattering of needles and a pen-knife stuck in the beam by the window above the engraving _Louis and Margy, six years._

Circling the outside of the second, Sam peered in the back window. Someone had left the remains of what looked like a cleaned and gutted turkey skin. Not likely to be supernatural. The third cabin proved similarly empty.

Sam stood at the furthest border of the clearing, looking at the map. The second group of three cabins couldn't be far, judging by the placement. The last two were deeper into the woods. Sam looked up at the bared sky above the clearing - it was still light. He could make it before dusk. Stuffing the map back into his jacket, Sam plunged again into the forest.

The second grouping of cabins appeared much as the first had done, not a hunter in sight, mundane or supernaturally inclined. It wasn't so surprising, as the clerk had pointed out, in the off-season. Still, the silence was faintly unnerving.

Sam cast his eyes around the second needle-strewn clearing, looking for any signs. According to the map, the last group of two cabins lay north-west. Evening was closing in, but Sam was determined to at least check it out. It was the last possible place Danny could have set up camp, provided Sam was right about Danny's line of thinking. It was possible he had ventured further into the woods, perhaps setting up a traditional camp of tent and fire, but Sam doubted it. It was a vulnerable position, out in the open on the turf of a supernatural entity that had proven probably lethal to at least five loggers. At least the little cabins provided some shelter, and were minimally defensible, especially if Danny was alone, which Sam had assumed he was. None of the victims from Danny's previous hunts had indicated a partner, and he had been alone when he left Virginia. Unless he knew some hunters in Colorado, he was likely to be hunting solo. Sam wished he didn't know what that was like.

He pushed the thought away. The last of the cabins lured him with the last of the clues he had, and he pressed on.

Shadows were lengthening by the time Sam made the final camp. All around him, evening was settling fast over the wilderness, and he was starting to get cold despite the brisk pace he had kept up since the last camp. Some animal called from the trees, but it sounded distant. The two hunting cabins were dark shapes in the gathering twilight, and Sam stopped at the tree line, listening. Apart from the night birds that had begun to call as evening closed in, there was no other sound. The cabins were dark - no camp lights. If Danny was in there, he was there in complete blackness. Sam swallowed and tried not to think about what that meant. He tugged a flashlight free of the bag, but didn't click it on. Instead, he circled both cabins, looking for signs of life. Everything was bare, and still. Circling back, Sam pushed the door of the first cabin - and found it locked. The others had been open, for free use by whoever hunted there in the game seasons. Sam peered through the windows, but the gathering dusk made distinguishing anything difficult. Leaving it for the meantime, he approached the second cabin, and pushed at the door. It swung open to a lot of things inside.

Sam's heart rate doubled, and he clicked on the flashlight.

The walls were tacked with papers over the plank braced against the wall that served as a bench. On the wooden bunk, a blue bedroll lay empty, next to a kerosene lamp. Two packs squatted under the window. Eyes skittering around the room, Sam shut the door behind him and made a grab for the lamp, striking a match from the book lying beside it to bring the wick to life. Shadows danced around the cabin. Sam sat the lamp on the bench, and clicked off the flashlight. He picked up a sheaf of papers, and froze. Beneath them was a black buckled notebook with a rosary threaded through it - a hunter's journal. Danny's. He was here. Setting it and the wash of feelings and memories that came with such an object aside for the moment, Sam began sorting through Danny's paperwork. It all dealt with one subject - Arisae. Sam's shoulders sank. It was crazy rare, but it made sense. It was half spirit half shape-shifter, capable of taking both corporeal and non-corporeal forms. In lore, it was said to protect the forests, tempting or tricking trespassing woodsmen or lumberjacks off the path to wander lost in the wilderness, making them easy prey for the Arisae. Looks like this one had changed its tactics a little, causing mischief in its spirit form that led to the accidents at the mill, separating the loggers from their numbers and following them home, where they were wounded, unaware and vulnerable, as Sam had already reasoned. It also made sense why none of the hikers or hunters had gone missing in these woods. Arisae were nature spirits. Hunting and migrating were natural behaviours that didn't harm the forest, over-all. The aggressive industrial felling of the forests by human kind was exactly the sort of target Sam would have expected from an Arisae. It was so obvious he was starting to wonder why it hadn't occurred to him already. He blamed the rushed way he had been forced to come at this whole hunt, his own distraction, and the fact that Arisae were rare. They were generally not aggressive in this way, but he supposed the mill and its activities had pushed this Arisae into some unorthodox action. Still, the basic nature of the creature gave Sam some insight. Arisae generally kept to non-corporeal forms during the day to avoid detection, and hunted in corporeal form at night. They tricked and tempted in the spirit form, leading the intruders off the paths often appearing innocuously as lights, mist glimpsed through the trees, or a voice calling, often mimicking other members of the intruder's tribe or band. Once the target had been lost in the woods, the Arisae waited for the fall of darkness, when its physical form would be harder for the daylight-dwelling creatures to see and defend against. Then it attacked, killing and generally devouring the bodies of its victims, so they simply disappeared, never to be seen again. It served as a warning - don't threaten the woods. Often what you didn't see was more terrifying than what you did. It certainly matched the descriptions of what had happened to the loggers.

If this was an Arisae - and to give Danny due credit as Sam sifted through his research, it was extremely likely that it was - that would mean Danny had to have gone after it at night. An Arisae could not be killed in its spirit form. The physical beast had to be killed. Which was dangerous in itself, as a corporeal Arisae was on a hunt of its own.

But Arisae hunted in the woods. Sam thought it unlikely that it took the loggers in their own homes, risking the outnumbering humans and operating away from its familiar hunting grounds. He could only imagine that this rouge Arisae either lured the loggers into the woods all the way from their homes in Bailey, or it captured them in spirit form, returning to the woods to set them loose and shift into physical form for the hunt. The weird behaviour of the spirit gave him pause. Generally, all things supernatural stuck to a specific pattern. Still, as they knew from the Okami and the Lamia, the apocalypse had shaken the monster can, and now with Leviathan in the mix, anything was possible. Sam sighed, his eyes skittering over Danny's paperwork. A map on the wall at his eye-level marked the location of the missing loggers' homes in Bailey. Much of Danny's research dealt with the lore of the Arisae, and traditional methods of dispatch - which made Sam's eyes stray to the packs under the window. He knelt, feeling oddly awkward about going through Danny's belongings, but he had to know if the appropriate weapons were missing. If so, he could take a guess that Danny had gone on the hunt - and never returned. One of the packs was dedicated to Danny himself. Clothing, camp and food provisions, washing gear, numbers, a cellphone with a dead battery, a photo of a small brunette woman with a heart-shaped face he could guess as being Mavis Wells. The other dealt with the hunt - it was crammed with weapons. Sam smiled sadly. No doubt Danny had taken this particular system from Dean, the first hunter he met. Focusing on the job, Sam set Danny's weapons out on the floor, and confirmed his theory - there was no shotgun, only half a box of iron buckshot, and no brass knife. Danny had known what to hunt Arisae with, Sam had made sure of that from his research. Sam cursed, rubbing his face. Arisae were a rare thing, he hadn't exactly thought to bring a brass dagger with him, and Danny had obviously taken his. Still … Sam set his own duffel of weapons down beside Danny's and rifled through for some improvisation. Arisae were both spirit and monster, so hard metals were disliked by both. He had copper - that might work. It was a sheath of an old and ornate silver deer's heart dagger, but Sam could work with that. Taking the dagger, he held the metal of the sheath over the lamp's flame until it heated enough to be slightly pliable. Casting around for something to mould it with, Sam's eyes caught on a steel water bottle - it'd have to do. Alternatively heating the copper and pounding at it with the water bottle, Sam slowly moulded the sheath to the silver blade inside. His running joke with Dean's sense of first aid being restricted to duct tape and bar rags wasn't entirely a joke - his brother tended to keep both rags and tape on hand. At the moment, Sam was grateful for the latter, as he wound it around the hilt of the dagger and down onto the blade. It would hold. He had a sawed-off with him, and considering Danny's half-box of buckshot … he had no real way of knowing how long Danny had been missing. He had been seen at the mill maybe a week, week and a half ago. If he had set out even the next day … unlike wendigo, Arisae were not known to store prey. If Danny had been missing that long, his chances of survival were sinking.

Sam's hands slowed. He was getting ahead of himself, allowing Dean's need to drive him into action without thinking. Danny was a hunter, rookie or not. Sam knew, and had seen from his research, that Danny had known what this thing was, its method of hunting, its hunting grounds, its prey and motivation, and how to kill it. He had prepared for this - Sam and Dean had gone into hunts with less. And he had gone into the woods hunting after it alone, and never come back. Sam couldn't afford to end up the same way, not now. Sam sat back on his haunches, his mind straying to something beyond _find Danny, save Dean _for the first time since his brother had hit the floor back at the holiday house in Nebraska. What had been Danny's mistake? Was he about to make the same one? What would happen to Dean if both Danny and Sam disappeared courtesy of the Arisae? Ironically, Sam found himself acting like Dean - running on need, not thought. He should do more reconnaissance, maybe call in some markers owed and get a few more hunters in on the job, outnumber the Arisae, which did not cope well with stacked odds. Research more, find out more than Danny had known, perhaps then being able to pinpoint the hunter's mistake. But if Danny had been missing a week …

Sam's cellphone buzzed in his hip pocket, startling him sharply to his feet. Clenching his teeth, heart pounding at the sudden shock, Sam clicked the receive.

"_Sam."_

"Frank? That you?"

"_Yeah - where are you at?"_

"I found the cabin, it's got to be the last place Danny stopped before he went in for the hunt. I found his journal and supplies here, it's got to be the end of the line."

Sam closed his eyes, trying very hard not to think about the poetic implications of his choice of words. "I was about to go in after it, but … Frank, I think maybe I should call in some other guys on this. Danny knew what he was talking about, and it still got the jump on him."

There was silence on the line.

"Frank?"

"_Yeah. You gotta do what you think best, Sam."_

Sam went cold. "What do you mean?"

"_Dean's … well, Pete's back and pushing to take him up to the ER."_

Sam broke out in cold sweat, every nerve in his body rachetting up his panic. His heart was hammering in a way that had nothing to do with being stupidly startled by a ringing cellphone and his mouth was dry.

"What happened, Frank? Tell me!"

"_Take it easy, he's not dead. He's taken a turn for the worse. We've had him on the IV, keeping him hydrated and tried to warm him up, but he's cold, Sam. His blood pressure's low and Pete says his body is shutting down. He's had Dean on oxygen for the past few hours and there's only so much in the way of medical supplies he can steal."_

Sam felt the panic spread through his body, adrenaline flooding his veins, whiting out his mind. This was it. Dean was dying - for real this time, just like Bobby. No Cas to zap him back to life, no deals to be made, no hope in God, and a lot of doubt about the destination of Dean's soul if his body fulfilled Pete's prediction.

"_- am? Sam, you still there?"_

"I'm -" Sam's voice was a croak - he cleared his throat and tried again. He tried to keep a lid on this, keep the panic from breaking through his control and spilling into his voice. He tried to stay calm and focused - and failed.

"What the hell am I even doing here?" He yelled into the phone, pacing a tight circle, left hand fisted in his hair. "What the hell were we thinking? Dean's dying and I'm states away, chasing down a missing hunter! Dean was out of his mind, how do we even know he was making any sense? That Danny knows any more than we do? We have no idea what this is, and we've done jack about fixing it!"

"_Slow down, Sam! Think. Dean may have been affected by whatever this is, but your brother is a hunter. He pointed you in the right direction, trusted you'd figure it out. Gave you what you needed to save him. I didn't want to say anything but we've got nothing, Sam. Nothing in Singer's scribbles explains this. I wouldn't even know what else to do, and Pete's doing all he can medically without dumping Dean at an ER. And we don't even know if they'd be able to help him any more than we can. This is a supernatural problem. This is our turf. And you're going after the guy Dean knew could fix this. You're doing exactly what you should be. Dean needs Danny - and Danny needs you. You can still pull both of them out of the fire here."_

Sam had stopped pacing, floored. It was probably the most he had ever heard Frank say, and there was too much truth in it to ignore. He remembered clarity snapping back into Dean's eyes when they fell on Sam - _Find Danny. _Frank was right on both counts.

All his deliberations of only a few minutes ago seemed not worthy of contemplation, not when it was clear even through Frank's skeletal description that Dean's body was slowly dying fast enough that his brother could no longer breathe properly. If Sam doubled back, researched, picked up the proper weapons, or even stayed where he was in the cabin and called in any hunters he even knew who would give a crap about him and Dean enough to help, how long would that take? A day, two days? Sooner rather than later, they were going to have to hook a feeding tube into Dean - if his lungs even lasted that long. It would be too late. And as if that wasn't enough, what would become of Danny if Sam never found him? The hunter would die out here, alone at the hands of the Arisae, and no one in his life would ever be able to be told why.

"_Sam, you listening to me?"_

"What?"

"_You do what you gotta do, kid. Just don't get yourself killed doing it."_

"I gotta go."

And he did. Sam clicked off his phone, his focus narrowing into a pinpoint. He grabbed the weapons he did have, and plunged into the woods.


	5. Chapter 4 : The hunt

Without a solid location on the rogue Arisae, Sam knew the best option was also the riskiest - bait. He also knew it was his only shot. He had to focus on appearing lost in the woods, ideal prey for the Arisae, but sure enough of his surroundings to avoid Danny's fate and find his way out again. He didn't have the tools to do enough damage to the forest to provoke the Arisae into defensive territorial action unless he set it on fire, and that would both attract unwanted attention and place himself and possibly Danny, if he was even still alive, in danger. But he did have something of Danny's - the hunter's jacket, taken for that very purpose from Danny's pack back at the cabin, to link Sam to Danny, making him a threat and fair game for the Arisae. Come and get it. Sam waded through the undergrowth, the makeshift copper dagger at his belt and the shotgun loaded with the last of Danny's iron buckshot braced against his shoulder, weighted familiarly in his hands. He was on the hunt, and despite years worth of resistance to this life, he'd be lying to himself if he denied that his pulse had quickened with it, his senses were alive, his mind clear despite the clamouring in his head that was his worry for his brother. It was a primal thing, Sam thought as he peered into the darkness. Predator seeking predator. The moon was overhead, painting the woodland a contrast of silver and black.

"Come and get it, you son of a bitch!" he yelled, his voice ringing off the trees, channelling some of his frantic energy into the challenge, again reminding himself of a 26-year-old Dean and his cocky invitation to the wendigo that lurked in the shadows, distracting it while Sam got the civilians out of there. Anything that got in the way of him helping Dean was going down. Hard. Sam quickened his pace, heading deeper into the woods, away from the off-road and the mill behind him, away from the shelter of the cabins.

"Hey!" He yelled at the night and the silence. Nothing. He tried something else. "Danny?"

No response. Sam shifted the bag on his shoulders, flexing his fingers around the shotgun, and kept walking, wending deeper into the dark and the trees.

He knew where he was enough to be satisfied he wasn't really lost, though he hoped he looked convincing enough. Everything else squeezed out of his mind as he stalked his prey through the striped woodland. The night birds called above him - Sam was aware of their sounds and movements, but had discounted them as irrelevant right now. Something rustled in the undergrowth and Sam aimed the shotgun - at a turkey. He pushed on. He glanced at his watch in the weak light. He had been walking 20 minutes. Night was deepening, plenty of time had passed under cover of darkness for the Arisae to manifest its physical form. Sam tried not to think about the machine operator he had seen superficially injured at the mill just that day. It was likely the man was the Arisae's next victim. Still, Sam couldn't have warned him - what was he supposed to say? You better watch your back because you're about to be attacked by a non-corporeal forest monster? Even if he had, he knew he couldn't touch the Arisae in its spirit form. He was doing the only thing he could for everyone involved - Dean, Danny, and the mill worker. He was seeking to finish off the Arisae when it shifted into its physical form for the kill, and he was pretty certain this was where it planned to do that. It made sense as to how Danny had just disappeared.

There - Sam's senses came alive. Movement, and it was no turkey. It was big, and moved with a strange sinuous grace. He slowed, softening the sound of his feet in the undergrowth, and peered into the darkness. Bingo. The Arisae was about 20 feet from him, in its physical form, crouched over something in the undergrowth. It lifted its head like a lion eating a gazelle, and Sam saw the collar of a mill worker's uniform. The man wasn't moving. Sam butted the shotgun up against his shoulder and crept forward. He stopped at the point where he was reasonably sure of his shot and any closer would likely alert the Arisae crossed, and raised the shotgun sight to his eye. As he did, the Arisae lifted its head - and stared directly at him. Ah, hell.

The monster's eyes suddenly glowed iridescent - the spirit form in the flesh blazing out at him, the dark green skin of the beast rippling with incandescent waves. The Arisae was big, obviously adult, with a powerful body and four legs, long thin head crowned with short leathery spikes, tapering into snapping jaws. Sam felt himself tense as the monster turned from the body of the mill worker and slowly rounded on him, muscles outlined from the light undulating beneath the flesh, eyes bright and hollow. He aimed the shotgun as accurately as he could manage before the Arisae attacked, and fired. The monster took its cue, screeching at Sam's attack like a predatory bird, and sprang at him, its speed and weightlessness belied by its size. It contacted Sam with a solid body shot, sending both man and monster flying into the undergrowth and knocking the memory of the monsters in the graveyard, that had started this whole insane chapter, into the forefront of Sam's mind. The Arisae growled, twisting in the bushes to face off with Sam, who scrambled for his shotgun and fell backwards on his ass, aiming high. He fired a second round, and must have contacted the Arisae, as the monster gave a high-pitched squeal.

It ran for him, its long dark head flattened against its powerful shoulders, snapping jaws intent on tearing Sam apart. It was too close to shoot - Sam cursed, grabbing for his improvised dagger. Time to see if copper would work on the Arisae. The beast momentarily shocked Sam by wrapping both long-fingered front claws around his wrists in a scarily human-like gesture, forcing his hands away from his face and exposing his neck. _No you don't, _Sam thought, twisting his wrist viciously to flick the blade across the Arisae's face. The creature howled, and one bright eye blinked out into darkness. The cold, hard grip around his wrists released, the presence of the monster moved away. Sam blinked, wincing. He had no time to worry about whether or not he had broken or just wrenched his wrist right now - he stood up to a crouch, dagger raised defensively as he sought the shotgun in the undergrowth. The Arisae was gone. Sam looked down at something dark and iridescent covering his hands and arm - the Arisae's blood. Sam looked up at the crumpled pile of the mill worker's shirt. Cautiously he moved to the body, but didn't bother to check for a pulse - most of the mill worker's throat was missing, torn out by the Arisae's teeth. Sam left him for the meantime, looking ahead. There - a dash of iridescence in the darkness. Sam approached it carefully, shotgun raised and dagger back in his belt. The Arisae was bleeding badly, either from the buckshot or the slashed eye or both. Involuntarily giving Sam a trail to follow.

For the better part of the next twenty minutes Sam tracked the blood trail of the Arisae deeper into the woods. Though he didn't have to maintain the illusion of being lost, he sincerely hoped he wasn't _actually_ lost. The tree growth was getting more dense in these parts, and the land was sloping upwards. The muted night sounds of the woods continued around him, but Sam had ears only for the Arisae.

He continued upwards, the terrain turning into a crumbling rocky outcropping in the trees. He stopped. The faintly shining blood was smeared all over the flat rocks, leading up to a copse of trees. Sam grinned coldly - looks like hunters thought alike, human or monster. The Arisae was retreating to a place of strength and defensibility, just as Sam and presumably Danny had considered the hunting cabins.

Sam followed cautiously, shotgun poised. The Arisae was wounded, but it had the advantage here. This was its fallback, and in a sense it had led him here. It was ready for him. Ready to defend itself against death. But Sam's purpose could not have been more clear - this thing was killing people, it was entirely possible it had killed Danny, but most of all, it was standing between Sam and the means to help his brother. He felt no conflict in killing it.

The rocks rose up to a craggy wall to his left, the copse of trees clinging to the protection of the rock ahead of him. The Arisae's blood led him in. Behind the trees, Sam found himself in a small scooped out recess in the rock, something that looked vaguely like it had once been a cave, one side eroded away with time. Presumably, the Arisae's lair.

He was waiting to be jumped, but even so, he was surprised when the bulk of the supernatural monster dropped on his back from the darkness of the recess above him, knocking the shotgun out of his hands and driving Sam heavily to his knees against the rocks. Pain shot up his body, his blood adding to the Arisae's. He had to get out from beneath the thing before the Arisae did exactly what it did next - snapped its teeth at his neck, seeking the kill. Sam jerked away just as the deadly teeth grazed his neck, cutting into the back rather than the artery at the side. The mother had still bitten his neck, though, and Sam grasped the hilt of the dagger, twisting as he scrambled away to stab the Arisae in the face.

It howled and retreated, but one bright eye was still on him, and the creature was not letting up this time. Sam scrambled back on his feet and hands like a crab as the Arisae followed, crawling rapidly to close the distance between them. It would spring, and Sam would be finished. The shotgun - Sam scrambled for the weapon, grabbing it up to turn on the Arisae bizarrely mid-spring. He fired without taking aim, but the beast was close enough that he would have to try very hard _not _to hit it. The buckshot found flesh just as the heavy front claw slashed out at Sam, catching him across the chest. The Arisae screamed and Sam stumbled back against the rocks. The Arisae lunged again, unwilling to retreat, its teeth again flying for Sam's throat just as his hand came up and he dropped the shotgun.

The body of the monster slammed against him, knocking the air out of his lungs and peppering his vision with tiny spots. It gave a yelping grunt, the teeth inches from Sam's throat - and went still. Sam shoved as hard as he could, dislodging the Arisae from him, and both man and beast fell to the dusty floor. The Arisae was still, Sam's makeshift copper-coated dagger protruding from its throat. Sam went down to his hands and knees, dragging air back into his body and coughing harshly. There was blood in his mouth that wasn't his, and Sam spat in disgust. He dropped backwards against the rock, grabbing the shotgun, panting, his eyes on the Arisae. It wasn't moving. The sleek, muscular body lay still, Sam's copper dagger in its neck. Looks like copper worked, Sam thought, and coughed out a grim laugh. He raised the shotgun and blasted buckshot into the body to be sure, but the monster gave no response. Its single bright eye was dark.

Sam sagged back against the rock, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, the shotgun hanging limply in his arms. He stumbled, looking around him. It was dark in the outcrop, and Sam had dropped his bag when the Arisae had dropped on him. He stumbled toward it, checking himself superficially. His chest stung where the Arisae had slashed him, but he had no idea how much of the dark stain was his blood, how much was the monster's. His wrist was still working, so not broken, but it ached enough to make him hesitant about using it. He dabbed at his neck - the Arisae's teeth had grazed the back and side of his neck, but he couldn't feel blood flowing, so judged that everything important had been missed. His chest ached savagely - cracked ribs, he guessed distantly. He had skinned his knees, but that was the least of his concerns. He grabbed up the bag, found the flashlight, and clicked it on. The beam swept around the semi-spherical cave, over the still body of the Arisae, flickering through the trees that clung to the outcrop. There was something back there.

Tiredly, Sam swung the bag onto his back and followed the beam of the flashlight into the trees.

The outcrop swung back to his left, the trees petering out when the land sloped downward to his right. More scooped-out rock formations dipped into the rock outcrop, and Sam almost fell into the cavern that opened at his feet. He stopped, and stared at it. Given the shape of the land around him, Sam guessed the subterranean cavern was natural. Sam crouched at the side of the hole, and shined the flashlight downwards.

Something moved in the darkness, and Sam's fatigue vanished. Could there have been more than the Arisae going on here? He swung the beam of light around the cavern, noting the roots of the neighbouring trees protruded into the space from one side, and several rocks had fallen in. The floor was scattered with dust and debris - but there was something moving in there, keeping to the shadows in the corners. Who knew how many mill workers had been taken, sharing the same fate as the body of the man left back out in the woods.

"Hello?" Sam asked of the dark.

Again, something moved in the darkness, and a pale oval tilted up at him, dark hair falling across it. Sam's heart shot into his throat.

"_Danny?"_

Movement again, and Sam broke out in a sweat as he watched the form of the hunter move into the middle of the cavern, shielding his eyes from the light.

"Who - who is that?" Danny's voice sounded strained and cracked, like he had been yelling in vain for a long time.

Cursing his stupidity, Sam angled the flashlight up his body like a kid telling a ghost story.

"It's me, Sam."

Danny dropped his hand, clearly shocked.

"_Sam? _Sam Winchester? What the hell are you doing - how are you here?"

"I was looking for you. I'm gonna get you out of here Danny, just hold on. Are you hurt?"

"Sam, there's an Arisae -"

"I know, just hold on I'm going to get a branch or something."

Sam dropped the bag and ran for the trees, looking for a branch long enough to reach Danny, a rock he could roll in, anything. A fallen bough in the nearby copse looked both long enough to reach down to Danny and thin enough for Sam himself to carry. He dragged it toward him, weighing the possibilities, before dragging it back to the cavern.

He shined the light back down to the hunter.

"Danny?"

The hunter was standing where Sam had left him, looking up at the surface.

"Hey, I found a branch, I'm going to lower it down, okay? See if you can climb up."

"Sam listen, the Arisae is still out there."

"I know, it's okay. Here, watch out, I'm lowering it in."

Sam grabbed one end of the branch, sliding it over the edge of the cavern. He shone the light down to watch Danny reach up to guide the bough into the hole.

"Can you climb up?"

"I'll try."

"If you can get about half way I can pull you out."

Sam watched nervously as Danny's form tugged itself along the branch in the dimness.

Pale hands grasped the bough, the end shaking against Sam's bracing hand as the hunter slowly pulled himself up. Sam had no way of knowing if Danny was injured, first he just had to get him out of there - he could almost reach him.

"Here, give me your hand, I can almost reach you."

Danny's face tilted up toward Sam in the glow of the flashlight beam, sitting at the mouth of the cavern. He reached up, slipped, and clung back to the bough.

"You can do this, Danny. Reach up." Sam encouraged, lowering himself as much as he could toward the hole.

The pale hand stretched up toward him again - and Sam grasped it. He hauled on Danny's weight with all his strength, his body screaming in protest, but he didn't care, and he didn't stop. With effort, Danny's elbow hooked over the top of the cavern and the little hunter kicked at the branch, scrambling up to lay panting at Sam's side. Neither man moved for a moment, before Danny scrambled to his feet.

"The Arisae, I couldn't take it out -"

Sam tiredly found his feet before Danny ran out into the woods on him, looking for his prey. He grasped the smaller man by the shoulders, trying to drive the message into his head.

"Danny, I know, it's okay. It's down. The Arisae is dead."

The face that tilted up at him was so pale in the weak moonlight that Sam's mind flashed on the effects of a Slender Man. Danny stared at Sam, apparently uncomprehending. Sam tried again.

"I shot it, stabbed it, and my dagger is still in its neck. It's dead, I promise."

"Oh," was all Danny said.

It was lucky, Sam thought, that he still had a grip on Danny's shoulders, otherwise he would have face-planted right into the rock. _Should have seen this one coming, _Sam thought as Danny's eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped, caught hastily with a curse by Sam. Sam laid the smaller man on the ground a moment and really looked at him. Likely, adrenaline had been the only thing keeping Danny conscious - the knowledge that the predator was still out there, his hunt wasn't done. He'd have to remain vigilant if he wanted to stay alive and finish off the Arisae. The moment he understood that it was dead, and the threat passed, his body demanded dues for all the abuse he had put it through, and the lights flipped out. Danny was horribly pale, his clothing tattered and filthy, one side of his chest and side covered in dried blood. There was a gash on his head that looked deep, but was obviously several days old and scabbed shut. His eyes were lost in shadows and his face looked drawn. Sam checked him quickly for any injuries likely to be life-threatening in the time it would take to get them both back to the cabins, but found nothing of significant worry. Danny's ankle was likely broken - Sam had no idea how he had managed to pull himself up at all - and the Arisae had taken a deep swing at Danny's body, deeply clawing from his hip to his collar bone, but it was flesh and muscle damage at most. He was breathing, no internal or spinal damage that Sam could see, and apart from the gash on his head, Sam doubted head injury. Still, he was unconscious and not waking up any time soon, Sam guessed.

There was nothing for it - Sam couldn't afford to wait it out with the Arisae's corpse for Danny to come around, not with the image of Dean so still, hooked up to an IV and an oxygen mask, bouncing around his head. No, he had been given a dose of good luck in finding Danny alive at all - he wasn't going to push it. He'd have to carry Danny out of there. Sam's supply of adrenaline wasn't peaking out anytime soon. His hunt wasn't done, and Dean's need gave him strength. Plus Danny was little and light. He hoped he could manage to haul him back to the cabins.

Sam drew a deep breath, packed the weapons back into the bag and slung it onto his back. He knelt beside Danny, crouched forward, and pulled Danny's right arm over his right shoulder, hefting the unresponsive hunter into a fireman's carry. He pushed up, gauging Danny's weight. Thank God this wasn't Dean, he thought. He doubted he would have the strength left to haul someone of his brother's size out of the woods after everything else that had happened that week. He reminded himself to rib Danny for weighing a hundred pounds soaking wet later, if they both made it out of here.

Tiredly, doggedly, Sam retraced his steps, ironically enough using the same fading trail of the Arisae's iridescent blood to guide him back to the cabins. He shifted Danny's weight intermittently, stopped to switch sides two or three times despite the pain in his wrist, but Danny remained unconscious. Sam's shoulders were aching, his legs burning, and he could feel blood trickling uncomfortably down his stomach, he guessed from the slashes across his chest, soaking into his jeans. Eventually he stumbled and with a curse, tripped into the undergrowth, dropping Danny like a sack of grain. The smaller man lay sprawled out in the weak moonlight, eyes closed.

Sam sat for a moment and tried to get his jagged breathing under control. He was sweating and exhausted, but he had to keep going, he had to. Dean - God, what was happening to Dean right now? He looked around - where was he? Something dark was huddled on the ground ahead of him, and for a moment, Sam's heart rate spiked in fear. Then he recognized what it was, and relief mixed with remorse - the body of the Arisae's last victim, the machine operator from the mill. He tried to make his mind focus - that meant he was about twenty minutes or so out from the cabins. He could make it. He had to make it.

"You're buying me a drink for this," he informed the inert form of Danny as he lifted the hunter back onto his shoulder. "And getting me a new dagger."

By the time the regular shape of the two hunting cabins came fuzzily into view, Sam could have cried with relief. By then, he had dropped Danny's feet to brush against the forest floor, one arm slung across Sam's shoulders, Sam's other arm around Danny's waist. Sam had lost the strength to carry him anymore. Sam's wrist was white-hot with pain, his hand wrapped around Danny's wrist.

He stumbled to the door, fumbled it open with difficulty, kicked it shut behind him and gratefully dropped Danny onto his waiting bedroll. Sam sank down to the floor to slump next to the bunk, blinking back the darkness that was creeping into his vision.

No, he had to stay conscious. Had to make sure Danny wasn't going to die on him after all, had to call Frank and check on Dean, had to …

Sam passed out.


	6. Chapter 5 : Round Two

Sam came around slowly. What the hell had happened? Something was hard beneath him and it felt like something was sticking into his chest. What the -

Sam tied to move, and sucked in his breath. Ah, yes. His body's complaints all spoke up at once - his shoulders ached, his back was stiff and sore, his wrist was hot and swollen, his chest stung and his shirt was still wet with blood, and a monster had bitten his neck. He was thirsty, starving, his head ached and he was still exhausted. Still, sunlight poured in the window of the little hunting cabin - it was well past dawn.

He shifted with a groan, lifting his eyes to the bunk. Danny was exactly where Sam had left him, unmoving, his shadowed eyes shut. His face was white.

Fear shot through Sam, giving him energy despite how exhausted he was. He laid his fingers against Danny's throat and prayed he was alive. There - the pulse beat strongly, and Sam's head swam. Not allowing that to spin him too far, Sam dragged himself to his feet. Time to address the sorry state of both of them, as much as he could. There was no running water up here, and Sam had only brought as much as he could carry, not expecting to be in the woods long. Vaguely he wondered how long Danny had expected the hunt to take, and looked through the hunter's provisions for water. Danny had prepared for a longer stay than Sam, and with their combined supply, Sam judged it enough to at least clean out some of the more serious cuts on both of them and still have enough to drink to make it back to the off-road.

He stripped his shirts off - there was no point in salvaging either of them. Danny had a first aid kit. Good man. Combined with his own Sam had enough supplies for a minimal clean-up. This whole hunt, Danny had been better prepared than Sam had. Then again, Danny wasn't under a deadline. Sam had been racing against the rate of Dean's deterioration since Nebraska.

Stiffly, Sam washed down the slashes across his chest with some of Danny's water supply, and hissed at the burn of the antiseptic. Damn it, he thought - they needed stitching. He fished the necessaries out of Danny's first aid kit, lamenting the distinct lack of whiskey and missing Dean for that. The thought brought a twisted smile to his face. For all his censure of Dean's drinking habits, he would have welcomed something to take the edge off right now. He worked as steadily as he could, hands shaking from pain and fatigue. It wasn't a great job, but it would hold. He stuck a few dressings over the stitches for good measure, and half-heartedly washed the rest of the blood and dirt off as best he could with little water, before shrugging into a clean shirt.

Gingerly, he probed his wrist, rotating it carefully. He didn't think it was broken, just sprained. The bite marks at his neck were grazes more than punctures. He washed them out and applied more of the antiseptic. His knees were skinned, so he did the same for them, thinking more of washing up and taking care of superficial injuries back at the motel. What he wouldn't give for a shower.

Job done, Sam directed his attention to Danny. The hunter's pulse was a little slow, but steady. He remembered the slashes from Danny's hip to chest from the previous night, but his eyes strayed to the gash on his head. Danny had been unconscious a while now, and had remained oblivious to being dropped several times during Sam's trek back to the cabins. So, the most pressing concern had to be possible head injury.

Sam wet a cotton dressing pad from the first aid kit and carefully began to clean out the dried blood from the gash.

Danny's eyes snapped open, his hand shot up to grasp Sam's wrist, startling Sam.

"Whoa, it's okay, Danny it's me, it's Sam, remember?"

Grey eyes slid to fix on Sam's face for a moment, before a frown creased Danny's brow.

"Sam."

"Yeah."

"How the hell was that not a dream?"

Sam laughed despite himself. "I was starting to wonder, myself."

Danny released Sam's wrist and sat up gingerly, resting his back against the wall.

"Going to tell me what's going on here?"

"It's a really long story, Danny. I was going to get us both cleaned up as much as I can here, then get back to the motel. And from there -" Sam threw up his hands helplessly.

Danny was watching him with flat, unreadable eyes.

"Are you hurt?"

Sam shook his head. "Some superficial stuff, just hurts more than anything. I was starting to wonder if you had a head injury," he gestured to Danny's head with the pad. "Your forehead."

Danny dabbed at it with his fingers. "Yeah, smacked it pretty good when the Arisae threw me down there. It was lights out for a while, but I think I'm okay."

He looked down at himself.

"Hm. What do you say I clean up, and you tell me how the hell you found me last night? I was sure I was done for."

"To be honest I wasn't betting on finding you alive, either," Sam agreed, rubbing his forehead tiredly. "After the Ordog, I thought I'd lost your trail, and then this."

Danny's eyes snapped up to Sam's face, antiseptic half way to his head.

"The Ordog?"

"Yeah, I've been tracking you down through your hunts for what feels like months. The spirit, the Slender Man, the Ordog. I thought I'd lost you, but Mireia, she told me you mentioned a job up Colorado way, and I followed you here."

Danny was staring at Sam in surprise. "You - wait a second, you followed me here through every hunt I've done for the past month? Mr Kinney and his wife, that tenement in New York, the Ordog in West Virginia? Sam … wow."

Sam smiled sadly. "I could say the same for you. An Ordog is no easy mark. You saved those people, and the kids at the tenement."

Danny shook his head, dropping his eyes.

"Not all of them. That bastard won that day."

"You killed it Danny, even when it took its piece from you. You saved the kids left there."

Danny looked up at Sam.

"Sam, not that I'm not grateful or anything, you just saved my damn life and finished my hunt, but why were you tracking me?"

Sam swallowed. Crunch time. "It's Dean."

"Dean sent you to find me? He couldn't have known I was missing."

"He didn't. It was the last thing he said to me - find Danny."

"Wait a minute, what do you mean the last thing he said to you? Sam, Dean's alright, isn't he?"

Sam shook his head, unable to meet the other man's eyes. His frantic worry had all been behind finding Danny, just do what Dean told you to and find Danny, and everything would be okay. He had hardly stopped to sleep or do anything else since, feeling like hellhounds were on his tail, like he had no time, he had to find Danny as quickly as possible. Now he had found the guy, and alive, he suddenly felt like it was too late. Pete hadn't called - he would have called if Dean was dead. He couldn't put his finger on it, but all the panic had bled out of him, leaving only sadness.

The smaller man shifted on the bunk, his hands gripping Sam's shoulders.

"Tell me everything."

So he did. He told Danny about the bizarre monster/demon dance-off and their suspicions about Crowley's crew trying to reopen purgatory and shove the Leviathans back in, about how Dean had started acting strangely after that, like he had to go somewhere, though he couldn't say where or why. Sam told him about what Dean had said right before he passed out, about Frank's theory that Dean knew something about what was happening to him, and sent Sam after Danny because somehow, Danny would know what to do. He told him about Pete the medic and Dean's condition, how Frank and Mills could find nothing in Bobby's library to explain this. He even told Danny everything that he had seen tracking Danny's hunts across the country and all the things that Danny had dealt with. He told him about the accidents continuing up at the mill, about catching word of Danny on the hunt, posing as an investigator hired by one of the loggers' families. How he had found the cabin and agreed with Danny's research on the Arisae, about how he was going to circle back and get some more hunters in on the job, but Frank had called to tell him Dean was getting worse, and Sam had gone in after Danny alone. He recounted with detachment the hunt through the forest, killing the Arisae, finding Danny and carrying him back here before he blacked out.

He told Danny about Dean slowly dying back in Nebraska with Mills and Frank and Pete the medic, and they had no idea why.

Danny hadn't said a word throughout Sam's tale, just watched him unblinkingly.

That was one of the many strange things about Danny Ellis, Sam thought as he ran out of words. He had thought the same thing back at the bar in Jackson years ago. You could feel eye contact, the touch of the soul behind the flesh, knew you were being watched even if you couldn't see anyone, could read so much of a person's mind from their eyes. Danny's eyes were like flat shale, lifeless and shuttered, the touch of those eyes holding no more impact than stone and giving away just as much. It was weird. He thought of the university paper photo he had used to identify Danny in New York - that flat look hadn't been there until Mavis Wells was murdered. The brunette with the heart-shaped face from the photo in Danny's pack. He thought of Jess, and wondered if he looked different after she died than he had before.

Danny shrugged out of his shirt, glanced at the slashes up his torso, and pulled a clean shirt over his head. "Find me something to splint this."

Sam looked up at him.

"What?"

"Find me something to splint my leg Sam, it looks broken. Then we get out of here."

"We got to look at your head, clean ourselves up. I doubt you can walk on that, we've got to find some other way of getting back to the off-road, maybe call 911."

"No time for that," Danny replied, shoving the stray items he could reach into his pack. "Dean's in trouble, and from what you say, he doesn't have much time. Damn my head and everything else, we're getting back to Nebraska as fast as we can. We're going to save Dean, y'hear?"

Sam stared at him for a moment, then something tight released in his chest, something he hadn't even been conscious was there since Nebraska, and his eyes filled up. Suddenly he was hot and couldn't seem to get enough air. He squeezed his eyes shut, his head spinning.

"Hey, take it easy Sam," advised Danny's voice, his hands back on Sam's shoulders. "Breathe, because I sure as hell can't return the favour and carry you out of here. Sam."

He shook the bigger hunter's shoulders. "Look at me."

Sam forced his eyes open, back to Danny's flat stare. Despite the dead, dispassionate effect of his eyes, Danny was obviously worried about Dean, too. Obviously cared enough about him to neglect a broken leg in order to get to him quicker. With everything Sam and Dean had lost, all the people that had ever cared about them dead, Danny's concern was the thing that came close to undoing him.

"Breathe, Sam. From what you've told me, I'm getting some idea of what you boys have been through lately, and I get it. But we're not giving up, okay? We're going to get back there and fix this, and Dean's going to be fine. Hold onto that, and we've got something to work with. Can you do that?"

Sam nodded, swallowing.

"Good. Now, I don't think it's a bad break, I can still put pressure on it. Fracture maybe. I'll mock up a crutch or something until we can get back into town. Pick up your stuff from the motel and wash, because I doubt airport security will pass either of us looking like this, and Nebraska is too far to drive. We can deal with cuts and bruises there, it'll save time. You say this Frank is a hunter?"

Sam nodded again, still not trusting himself to speak, but he was slowly getting a grip again under Danny's pragmatism.

"He'll be able to get us some supplies then. From what you've said I have some idea what was going through Dean's head before he passed out, but I can't say for sure until we can get to him and test some theories. Come on, help me pack this place up and splint this, then we're out of here."

What had taken Sam an hour on the way in took him and Danny three on the way back. Both hunters were at the end of their strength, tired and injured. They found the car, and sat panting for a few moments before Sam gunned the engine. The motel wasn't far, and Sam suggested Danny shower while he packed up. The older man agreed, and emerged a few minutes later looking considerably better. Clean, the cuts didn't look as bad, and were too old for stitching. Danny laid dressings over them with satisfaction. Sam followed suit, washing and tending to the various injuries he had picked up. Danny wrapped his wrist, and Sam returned the favour with Danny's ankle, swapping the stick they had splinted it with in the woods for a thin paperback book from the motel reception. They couldn't do much for how wrecked they both looked, but looking tired and wrung out wasn't a crime yet. They had booked the first flight out to Nebraska they could, Danny declining to be part of Sam's method of finding the money for a flight. They returned the Ford to pick up Danny's truck - at least it was better off at the airport than in the middle of nowhere, the smaller hunter had claimed. He picked up some ingredients from the back before they left, claiming they could help in determining what was wrong with Dean. Sam called Frank and told him he had found Danny, and that they had hunted and killed the Arisae. Both were tired and scratched up but fine, and on their way back to Nebraska. Mills had agreed to meet them at the airport and give them a lift back to the motel. Sam asked after Dean, Mills thankfully reporting no change. Pete had gone back to work, but was still dropping in when he could. She suggested she call him in when Danny started working on the supernatural side of Dean's predicament in case it had any effect on his medical condition. Sam's blood went cold, but he couldn't deny the sense in that. Danny chipped in a request for some supplies Frank should have no trouble finding, and Mills said she would pass it on.

Danny hesitated, then called 911 to report a body in the woods near the mill. He claimed he and his friend had been hiking in the wilderness when they had come across a dead body, about twenty minutes walk north-west of the last huts. He said it looked like it had been some animal attack, mountain lion maybe. He told the operator that when they saw the body, they got scared and ran away. He hung up before she could ask for a name.

Both hunters sat nervously expectant through the flight. The urgency that had bled out of Sam when despair and exhaustion had almost drowned him back in the hunting cabin was building back up, but with Danny fidgeting at his side, it was different. Desperation was cautiously turning into expectation, and Sam was honestly starting to let himself believe that they might be able to save Dean. That his brother had been right, and finding Danny alive had been a sign.

They stumbled off the plane to find the Sheriff waiting for them. Dean was fine, she said before Sam could open his mouth. Pete had arrived just as she was leaving, and Frank was still there with Dean. From what Pete could tell, Dean's condition hadn't worsened significantly since the last time, when the enterprising medic had put him on oxygen. Mills' dark eyes had travelled in cautious curiosity over Danny, whom she informed that Frank had picked up the supplies he wanted.

Sam sat in the passenger seat of Mills' cruiser, getting more nervous by the second. This was it. This was the point where they either saved his brother and everything would be alright, or Danny could do nothing to help Dean after all, and the only thing they would be able to do would be to take Dean to an ER and watch him die. The thought made Sam sick. He had done that too many times - he never wanted to do it again. He glanced at the side mirror, looking at Danny in the backseat. The hunter still looked tired and horribly pale, but calm. His flat grey eyes stared out the window, but Sam could tell he wasn't seeing the scenery. They _had_ to succeed.

Mills pulled into the motel parking lot, and Sam felt a strange sense of déjà vu. He had left at least a week ago - the days were starting to bleed into each other - but he felt like he had only just left and that it had been years at the same time.

Sam had known what to expect, had been told over the phone, but the sight of his brother still felt like a punch in the gut. Dean was covered up to his neck in blankets despite how stiflingly hot the room was, including a silver insulation blanket they used on hypothermic rescue patients. An IV was tacked to a coat hanger hung on the headboard, trailing down to the only other part of Dean besides his head not hidden in blankets - one arm was free, the IV in the inside of Dean's elbow, Pete's fingers resting on his pulse point. Dean was even whiter than Danny, and an oxygen mask covered most of his face.

Sam stopped dead at the sight of Dean, but only realized he was standing still and staring when Mills gently wound an arm around him from behind.

"He's okay, Sam. He's hanging in there."

Sam nodded in comprehension, then in greeting to Pete, who stood up and shook his hand. Frank sat in a chair against the far wall, his dull eyes on Danny.

The little hunter appeared to either not notice or not care. He set his bag on the table and rifled through it. Apparently finding what he was looking for, he limped across the room and bent over Dean, tugging the blankets down to Dean's ribs and laying what looked to Sam something like a ring of keys under the hollow of Dean's throat. That got no reaction from his brother, and Danny appeared to glean some information from that. He set a hand to Dean's forehead and pulled up one of his eyelids.

"He been lucid at all, in and out?" Danny asked of Pete.

"Ah, no," the medic replied, clearly confused. "He's unresponsive."

"Hypotension?"

"Yeah."

Danny nodded, laying the backs of his fingers on Dean's cheek.

"Cold."

"But not hypothermic, as of yet anyway."

Sam, Mills and Frank were watching the exchange like a tennis match.

"Can I take these off for a moment?" Danny asked, indicating the blankets.

Pete nodded, frowning.

Danny took something from his bag, and proceeded to dust Dean's body with what looked like ash, before striking an old-fashioned flint above Dean, causing the powder covering Dean's skin to crackle and hiss.

Pete yelped and started toward the bed, caught by Sam. The medic shot him an incredulous look, but Sam shook his head. Whatever Danny was doing, it was for a reason and wasn't hurting Dean. Danny ignored Pete and again bent over Dean, shaking his shoulder gently.

"Dean."

Dean gave no response, and Danny straightened up with a sigh.

"Okay, we're doing this the long way." He looked up at Frank. "You got the supplies, right?"

Frank said nothing, but stood up, moved to the table and tossed a brown paper bag at Danny.

"Some of that's unorthodox," he said.

"Some of it's improvised," Danny replied.

Sam had to hand it to him. Danny had to be exhausted, he had after all been hunting non-stop for over a month, his most recent ending with him trapped in a subterranean cavern for several days with no food and only the water he had in his pack, aware of the Arisae's lethal proximity and with no hope in anything but himself that he was going to get out of the woods alive. Sam had carried him out, but the moment Danny had woken up, it had all been motion again, both men intent on the need to save Dean. They had little sleep, less food, not enough water and too much stress. Sam's head was starting to spin - he had no idea how Danny was still on his feet at all.

He assisted when he could. Some of the elements of Danny's trial-and-error experimentation were staples of supernatural ritual and familiar to Sam, but others were either obscure, or of Danny's creation. Dean's bed was soon ringed in salt, with protective charms at the four corners. Danny burned herbs of banishment and cleansing, checking Dean's body (more thoroughly than his brother would have been comfortable with were he conscious) for any marks of binding links.

None found, Danny frowned at Dean.

"The way he was acting described summoning perfectly," he told Sam. "But the effects on Dean physically scream binding. Those things shouldn't have any place in the same job. Unless he was unlucky enough to have two things trying to kill him at once, there's something else going on here. There's really two possibilities - a human using supernatural means, or a supernatural entity. Either way, neither is completely human anymore. Any human with the concentrated willpower to have attacked Dean like this is unlikely to be doing it by human means. Which means we can sort of reverse-engineer this thing, mirror it back to its maker and bind/summon this thing to us."

"You think that's a good idea?" Frank provided the voice of caution.

"If we put protection in place first for ourselves and Dean from whatever shows up, then yeah, we can trap and kill it without harming him."

"Do it," Sam provided the decision.

Danny nodded, taking Sam's hand and placing it on Dean's chest. "You'll draw Dean better than anything I've got," he said, and Sam wondered sarcastically if Danny was actually _trying _to make him lose it.

Sam hadn't known Danny could sing, though technically it was intoning and Sam knew enough about physics to know the vibrations had nothing to do with musical talent, nor had he envisioned a literal mirror, but both were employed by Danny during the following few hours in an effort to bounce the spell back to ensnare its maker. The visceral powder that had horrified Pete had been intended to shock the energetic link from Dean's physical body, and Danny continued the theory by rubbing Dean's skin in salt water - another move that horrified Pete with Dean's cool body temperature in mind. Sam flinched when Danny nicked his finger, anointing Dean's head with Sam's blood, but magic wasn't just about means, it was about psychology, and Sam understood the intention when all Danny said was "believe it, Sam."

Preparations made, Danny recited the incantation to draw the supernatural with the supernatural, and Sam held his breath.

Nothing happened.

His brother's chest was barely continuing to rise and fall beneath his palm, and Dean remained silent and still, the room empty but for three anxious hunters, a medic in over his head and a Sheriff with all the best intentions.

Danny was staring at Dean, apparently nonplussed, and Sam's stomach dropped.

"That should have worked," he said tonelessly.

"Great," choked Sam, pushing to his feet and raking his hands through his hair. "Just great, you mean you have no idea what to do about this? Where the hell does that leave us?"

"No that's not what I mean," Danny argued, rising to his feet with a wince for his damaged ankle. "That _should _have worked. If this is what we've been assuming this is - attack by a supernatural means or creature, that would have worked. It didn't - and this isn't."

"What?" Sam and Frank asked in unison.

"Something else is going on here, something weird," Danny said, eyes on Dean.

"No shit, you said that! Danny what the hell is going on?"

Pete had moved to Dean's side, anxious to test his vitals and make sure the ghost hunters of the party hadn't made his patient's condition any worse. He slowed, hands around a pressure cuff.

"Guys?"

Danny and Sam turned to look down at him.

"I really have to insist on an ER. Like, now. His blood pressure's in the tank, he isn't going to survive this much longer, whatever's causing it."

"No, we can't, it won't make any difference," Danny argued. "This isn't medical, it won't matter what they do. If we don't stop this, Dean will die anyway."

Ignoring the fact that Sam had sunk onto the bed next to Dean's and Mills had moved to stand behind him, a hand squeezing his shoulder, Danny limped back to Dean and stared at him, gnawing his fingernails.

"Okay. Okay. There's one thing we can try. We can try to sever the link and reflect the binding and summoning at the same time. If we give it enough kick - yeah I think it can be done. But Sam, I got to say it, we still have no idea what did this, how, or why. All we've done is discounted possibilities, not come up with an answer. If we bind this thing inside a summoning of our own and sever the link to Dean, I can't guarantee that if this is a binding spell, it won't just be re-cast, and we'll end up in a supernatural tug-o-war over Dean. With the state he's in … I really don't like the possibilities. I also don't like what this thing could retaliate with. We don't know what we're dealing with. It's risky."

"Letting him stay like this is riskier," interjected Pete hotly. "I told you, he won't last much longer."

"Sam?" Danny's flat grey eyes were on the youngest Winchester, who raised his own green eyes to his brother's still form. He nodded.

Danny turned to Pete. "I need a defibrillator."

"What for?" yelped Pete, if possible looking even more shocked.

"Kick," Danny replied.

"Oh you've got to be kidding me, no way," Pete said, throwing his hands in the air. "His heart is _beating, _man! You shock him that hard, you'll kill him."

"And that's what a defibrillator is supposed to correct."

"No. No way."

Danny tilted his head at the medic, eyes flat.

"I'm going to get one, one way or another - just the second way runs the risk of me getting arrested and not being here to save Dean. The first way just involves you picking one up from an ambulance, clean and easy."

"You _can't," _Pete implored. "Guys, Dean's condition is serious enough as it is, even not having him in ICU is insane at this point. This is crazy."

"Pete, please," Sam's voice was soft, but sure. "It's all we can do to help him."

Pete visibly crumbled under the pain in Sam's gaze.

"Alright," he said, as if resigning himself to a course of action that went beyond professional negligence and right on into murder. "Okay. I'll be back."

He snatched up his coat and left, shaking his head.

In the medic's absence, Sam and Danny prepared Dean as best they could for the last gasp in their efforts. Sam wasn't convinced this would work at all, or that Pete would even come back, but he had to hold onto the hope, or he would be lost.

Danny dusted Dean with powder, positioned the mirrors, and took up a silver knife.

Just when Sam was sure Pete had come to his senses and bailed, the medic slipped back into the room carrying the portable defibrillator pack.

"Thankyou," Sam said earnestly.

Pete shook his head. "Don't thank me for killing your brother."

Sam swallowed, taking the hit.

Danny said nothing, simply continued with his ritual elements as Pete drew back the blankets, removed the oxygen and the IV, and positioned the panels on Dean's bare chest.

"Here," Danny thrust a Tibetan-style bell and mallet into Frank's hands. "Time it with the end of the banishment and the shock of the defibrillator. _Exactly._ We got to light this place up on all levels. Ready?" he asked of Pete.

The medic gave his characteristic nod, his hands gripping the shock button, dark eyes uncertain. Danny himself drew a breath, shifted his weight off his ankle, and began the recitation. Sam watched from the opposing bed as if in a dream. The energy in the room was almost palpable, whether from the influence of whatever supernatural force was at work on his brother, or from the five anxious people in the room. Familiar with the cadence of Danny's recitation by now, Sam knew he had a moment before electric shock once again stopped his brother's heart - this time, maybe for good. He crept to Dean's side, laying his fingers gently on the inside of his wrist, feeling that pulse still there.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

Danny's voice reached crescendo and cracked, Frank slammed the mallet into the bell and Sam dropped back against the side of the bed as Pete stabbed at the button.

Dean's body arched up, electricity sending him rigid, and Danny slammed the hilt of the knife into the mirror, scattering the floor with glass. The electricity caught the powder and once again, it hissed and crackled around Dean, but with the stronger current, the volatile mixture briefly flashed into a brilliant shock of light like the God particle, before it fizzled out of existence and Dean's body dropped limply back against the bed.

There was a moment of such utter charged expectation and stillness that Sam couldn't breathe, couldn't command his chest to expand, and briefly wondered if he would ever be able to again if the defibrillator's mechanical scream indicated flatline.

Just one moment - and then coughing broke out from somewhere near his head, desperate like a drowning swimmer. Something convulsed forwards on the bed. Dean was moving, dragging air into his body, coughing more. He propped one hand against the bed and looked around him through slitted eyes.

"_What the _-"

His brother's voice, hoarse and dry and shocked, but Dean. Alive.

Sam scrambled off the floor and damning everything else in the world, hugged his brother. God, it sent his mind spiralling back to that Wednesday, waking up and seeing Dean brushing his teeth and giving Sam snark about sleeping in. It jarred echoes of Dean and Bobby standing in his motel room door four months after Sam had seen Dean torn apart and been forced to confront the reality of living without him, Bobby assuring Sam that it was him, it was _really him. _Feeling Dean's arms come up around him, fiercely hugging, while Sam held on and gasped for breath. It was Dean like a fresh memory, dumbstruck in Bobby's library, the utter joy Sam remembered pulling his brother into his arms after everything that had happened at Stull, like a bad dream.

Dean was here, alive. That was all that mattered.

"Sam, get off me," complained Dean's voice from behind Sam's ear. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

Sam choked out an incredulous laugh, letting Dean out of the hug reluctantly, but keeping a firm grip on his brother's shoulders.

"What's wrong with _me? _Dean, you jerk, you just almost died on me again! I asked one thing from you, and that was _don't get killed!_"

"What are you talking about?" Dean demanded, catching sight of the other four people in the room, then the patches on his chest. "Ah, anyone gonna explain this?"


	7. Chapter 6 : Some Explanation Needed

Dean Winchester was speechless.

He gaped at his brother from where he sat on the opposite bed and could think of precisely nothing coherent to say. Which never happened to him. Not that he doubted Sam's story - he had no choice but to believe every word based solely on how god awful Sam looked. His brother was pale, his face drawn, eyes shadowed. His broad shoulders were stooped, bowed, as though he felt a weight bearing down on him. But the most telling was the lingering stress and knife's-edge sorrow he saw still colouring Sam's expression - that was, beneath the utter abject joy. In short, his little brother looked wrung out in every possible way, and Dean was left wondering how the hell this had happened.

He had followed the steps in the process clearly enough, starting from the floral disaster of a holiday house they had been squatting in. Not that he was by any means satisfied that Sam's abridged version was all there was to this, but his brother was very obviously exhausted, and Dean wasn't going to push it too hard. Yet.

He remembered some of it - he remembered the weird compulsion of needing to go somewhere, or do something but he couldn't place why. All he remembered was the _need _to, like an irresistible pull. He remembered the equally absolute conviction that something was very wrong and he needed to find Danny, that the little hunter was the answer.

He couldn't have said why, though.

And now what? He had jack-knifed awake half-naked in an unfamiliar motel room (not like that was anything different, but not remembering how he got there was less than common) to find Frank Deveraux, Sheriff Mills from South Dakota, Sam, Danny Ellis and some medic he didn't know all staring at him like he'd just turned into a Leviathan. Then there had been an overload of Sam as his brother bear-hugged him hard enough to squeeze the air out of his body.

To say Dean was confused had been an understatement, and confusion always came out as anger. It took him a moment to stop freaking out long enough for Sam to first get a grip, then persuade him into one.

Sam had introduced the medic at his elbow as Pete, who had apparently been there for a week or so making sure he didn't die. The small, dark-skinned, dark-eyed guy next to him nodded in greeting, then proceeded to check every vital sign he had while Dean demanded to know what the hell was going on here.

Sam had sunk onto the neighbouring bed and tiredly agreed to recount everything that had happened if Dean would just stay still and let Pete work. Dean had eyed the medic suspiciously, but Sam seemed to trust the guy, so he let it slide.

Sam had started his rant with the botched monster hunt in the graveyard, and Dean's apparently (yeah, okay) weird behaviour after that. From there it was meeting Frank, the good Sheriff lending a hand and contacting Pete-the-medic from South Dakota, who was apparently okay with all-things-supernatural from having a zombie try to rip his head off during the whole Death-rising fiasco. Tended to convert a guy. Sam had apparently believed Dean sane enough to go with his clue and go to Hartford to find Danny - which as it turned out hadn't been that easy, and that was where things got weird.

To say Winchesters were familiar with travel was to say the Earth was round, but the amount of travelling Sam had done that week or two was impressive even to Dean. Danny had been all over the place - and thus, so had Sam, always one step behind.

Dean hadn't really known the small details of what Danny Ellis had been up to after Jackson - a phone call here and there asking advice, mainly. But hell, the little guy had taken on every supernatural piece of crap in the country, it seemed. Dean shook his head. He didn't envy Danny the Ordog hunt, and saw the same opinion reflected back at him from Sam's tired eyes. Sam dryly recounted the hunts and towns he had followed Danny through, finally ending up in Colorado to save the older man's life from death-by-Arisae. That had been a good call for a relatively inexperienced hunter working solo. Arisae weren't exactly garden-variety. Then the two of them had hauled ass back to Nebraska to snap him out of … whatever this was. What was this again?

"That's just it," Danny answered from a chair by the dresser. "We don't know. You're okay so I'm going with the link to you being broken, but we don't know what did this, how, or why. I'm hoping I put enough into the mirroring to turn the combination back on its maker and bind this thing, summoning it to us, but I don't know what to expect next. It was the risk we took."

Okay so that was less than reassuring.

"Still," Pete piped up, "the fact that you're okay is a small miracle. I'd have put money on the fact that you were toast."

"Thanks," Dean said sarcastically.

"Welcome," Pete said with a nod.

"He's right though," Sam said tiredly from the opposing bed. "Whatever did this did it for a reason. This wasn't just some random curse we stumbled across, Dean. This was deliberate - it was after you. No offence to Danny's spell work, but I don't think it's just going to leave you alone because we mirrored it."

Danny nodded his agreement.

"Wow, that's encouraging, thanks guys," Dean quipped, but he'd be lying if he said the idea didn't unnerve him just a bit. "So what now? We sit around and wait for some monster to show up and ask "you rang?""

"Not much else we can do," Sam said. "Danny has protection in place, supposedly if the summoning worked, it'll lead this thing to us sooner or later, and we can trap and kill it."

"When we have no idea what it is. Yeah, that sounds plausible."

Sam shrugged. Dean narrowed his eyes and studied his brother. Sam looked like he was about to pass out - he had that lax, laid-back expression to his features that only came about when he was too utterly exhausted to care anymore. Which was never a good place for Sammy to be in. Danny didn't look any better. After it was clear Dean was okay and everyone calmed the hell down some, Pete had offered to check out Danny's ankle and winced at the red, swollen joint.

"Broken, but not too badly" he had said, in the kind of contradiction only a medic could have got away with.

Danny had shrugged. "Figures."

That, and being dropped in a hole for a few days by an Arisae with priorities didn't exactly make for beauty sleep. Both hunters were obviously exhausted, injured and at a stalemate with whatever nasty had caused all this crap.

"Okay, look," Dean began, rubbing out the ache in his forehead with the heel of one hand. "We obviously can't do anything else until it makes its move, whatever that is. Danny, man you should really get that ankle looked at. Everyone else can get some sleep and we'll wait it out."

"No, we have to be ready, we don't know what it is or what it could do to you, Dean," Sam protested immediately.

"Sam, you look like you're about to pass out. Let it go, dude. I won't go out hunting after this thing solo, I promise. There, happy? Just get some sleep before you're the one we're reviving. Danny can get his ankle set and we can all just take a load off and wait. Watch a creature feature, anything."

Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head at Dean's apparent gall, and he could almost hear his little brother's exasperated _you're unbelievable _in his head. He grinned, which probably only made things worse.

Within a few hours, night was deepening on Lincoln. Danny had gone with Pete to the local ER to get his ankle set, Sam, despite all his bitching, was sacked out on the bed fully clothed, and Frank was dozing with his head on his chest in the chair facing the door. Sheriff Mills had resigned herself to driving back to Sioux Falls - she'd been off work without pay for days now anyway, and the sooner she accepted the ass-whooping from the supervisor, the better. Dean thanked her for all her help, and despite the grin he laid on, he meant it and she knew it.

For his part, Dean had essentially been asleep for a week or two, and wasn't in any hurry for more. Besides, the whole thing deserved some thought. He was running all the possibilities of what kind of thing could cause this effect, and was unsurprisingly coming up empty. What the hell did he expect - Sam, Frank, Danny and the Sheriff had days pouring over Bobby's library and calling every contact any of them had to try and work out what this was, and they had got nowhere. It wasn't like there was likely to be anything overlooked in Dad's journal, the hundreds of times he'd read it, that was going to give them an answer, either. He scratched at his head with the end of a pen. So what, he was just supposed to sit here with his thumb up his ass, watching crap infomercials and playing sitting duck until this monster, or spirit, or _whatever _decided to try and kill him again? The whole bait routine was a bad idea if, like right now, he didn't have control over the outcome. This mystery card crap was getting old.

Dean shifted, mental restlessness translating into physical. Despite needling Sam about promising not to go and hunt this thing himself having been a joke, it didn't help that it was also exactly what he felt like doing. Meet it head on, to hell with all this waiting.

Sitting still waiting to be jumped was making him edgy. He could feel the edges of stir-craziness beginning to itch at the back of his mind. He'd go out for a walk around, a coke, anything.

Dean swung his legs off the bed, and concentrated for the meantime on getting his boots on and out the door without waking the two hyper-vigilant but - luckily for him - exhausted hunters in the room.

Outside the air was cool, and a welcome relief to Dean's sense of stuffiness. Everything was oddly still - Dean glanced at his watch. It was coming up on midnight. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, and wandered out into the parking lot. Damn, he missed seeing his baby there. Dully he wondered if life was ever likely to spring back to any semblance of what had been its staples all those years ago, before everything really started to go down the crapper. He scuffed his boots at the loose gravel and squinted at the sky. It was overcast, the moon lost in there somewhere, as even with the glare of the motel's electric lighting everything was unusually dark. Dean squinted into the dimness, wondering. Danny hadn't said anything about what to expect of this thing, because he quite simply didn't know. It wasn't like they could consecrate a circle and shazam whatever it was into it, clean and simple. You had to know what you were dealing with to trap it in such a way.

Ah, to hell with it. Dean turned on his heel and made his way back into the lot and their room - and stopped. The bulb over the door had blinked out. Maybe it was crappy no-tell-motel maintenance, but call it experience, when something dicked with the lights Dean got wary. The glare from the two neighbouring rooms could just silhouette a figure, standing perfectly still in the parking lot outside their room. Dean's hand crept around to his lower back - even after apparently almost dying, didn't mean he was going out for a casual stroll unarmed. His fingers closed around the Colt, and he drew it slowly, carefully, quietly. The clip contained silver, he knew. He just hoped that if this was their kind of customer, the metal would slow it down long enough to alert Sam.

Flexing his fingers into a more comfortable grip around the receiver, Dean angled the barrel at the bitumen and crept carefully closer, stopping about ten feet from the still figure.

"Hey."

A head half-turned at that, and Dean felt adrenaline wash through him. Something…

The figure looked over its shoulder, and slowly turned around, face half-illuminated by the door light of the neighbouring room, part of the features hidden in shadow. Nonetheless, Dean felt his stomach lurch in shock.

He could vaguely make out a pale face, sad dark eyes, dark shaggy hair, the quiet readiness of a young hunter. Dean swallowed, his throat dry, and knew he had broken into a sweat. It couldn't be. He was delirious, or maybe he really was dead and this was Heaven - again. Wouldn't be the first time he had seen this young hunter in his own greatest hits upstairs.

"Sam," he rasped.

"Not quite," replied the other, and familiarity washed through Dean. It looked so much like a young Sam, half-shadowed like that. A mixture of boy and young man. And that voice, he knew that voice, or had known it …

"Oh, God," he gasped, if possible even more shocked, so much so that his knees suddenly threatened to give out on him. "_Ben."_

The young hunter stepped into the light and gave him a smile a boy his age had no business wearing, pushing his hands into the pockets of a long black coat.

"Good to see you too, Dean."

"What - I - how the -" Dean couldn't make his mind connect with his mouth.

Ben Braeden stood watching him with what may have been amusement.

"I guess it worked, then. I wondered, for a while there."

"Worked?" Repeated Dean dumbly.

"Yeah. I did it to find you, so I suppose it worked."

"Hold on just a goddamn second here," Dean demanded, dropping his stance and letting the colt hang in one hand, the other held up against the impossible apparition of the boy he had regarded as a son for the year Sam was lost to him.

"This can't be happening. I made sure you forgot all this crap, you're supposed to be safe and happy with your mom behind a white picket fence somewhere."

"Yeah, about that."

"Oh, you are going to tell me exactly what the hell is going on here, if you even really are Ben."

Ben heaved a sigh, again looking older than he should have.

"I thought about what I'd say, you know, if I ever found you. Went over it in my head, but that doesn't seem - I don't know."

He glanced up at Dean almost shyly, but Dean himself had nothing he could possibly say nor was he even sure he could speak right now, so he continued to stare until Ben finally spilled.

"I did. I did forget. But then things started coming back. It was little things at first - one of mom's boyfriends invited me on a hunting trip to Montana with him and his son, and I remembered something about _hunting, _but mom said I'd never been hunting before. And then there was when we moved house. I remembered moving school and I thought the neighbourhood was crap, but I couldn't remember why we moved. There was always something _missing. _Like I forgot something. Then I remembered _when_ it was that I forgot. I was bike riding with my friends, stacked it and broke my arm. Had to go to the ER and get a cast and everything. I remembered being in an ER with mom, something about a car accident. I remembered someone telling me we'd been in an accident, but I couldn't remember any crash. Then I remembered hearing that - from you. Once I remembered you, I remembered everything from that year, and everything before that since I was eight, Dean. I knew there was some reason why I hated all mom's boyfriends even though they were all nice to me, why I missed some big guy I used to know but couldn't remembered from where. I remembered everything that happened."

Dean swallowed. This couldn't be happening.

"Does … Lisa -"

Ben shook his head. "From what I could tell, you had to _want _to remember. It had something to do with the person's free will. Mom … I think everything that happened, it hurt too much for her to want that."

Dean closed his eyes. _Oh, God._

"But me - I wanted to remember. You're my family, Dean, and you just gave it all up."

Ben took a few steps toward him, looking more like the boy he remembered as he warmed to his topic, and Dean found himself rooted to the spot.

"I remembered you teaching me about cars and taking me out on those trips, and eating pizza on Saturdays and soccer games. I remembered how happy mom was when you were around. You making us breakfast, what it was like, the three of us together. I remembered how you looked sad when you smiled sometimes. When I remembered you, it wasn't long before I remembered everything about what you did. What you were. Remembered those things that came to the house, took mom and me. I remembered how you came to get us, even though those things were everywhere, even though you and mom had broken up and you left and she got another boyfriend. I know I shot one of them, I know one got in mom and stabbed her. I knew it was no car accident."

He stepped closer, and Dean could hardly breathe with the immensity of it. Ben was watching his face closely, the earnestness of the child cooled into something harder, more pointed.

"After the hospital, I remembered following you to the door the day you made us forget, when you talked to us and we didn't even know you anymore. I saw the look on your face, Dean. You gave everything up. Gave us up. And I know it's not because you wanted to."

Dean swallowed, for about the fifth time that day, uncharacteristically lost for words.

"So, I figured fine, if you were part of a supernatural world, I'd use it to find you. I researched all kinds of things, but nothing worked. Then I found this summoning thing, to bring a lost person or object to you, and I used that."

"Summoning," Dean whispered. "But - there was binding -"

"Yeah, that was something else I looked into, but you had to know were the person or thing was before you could use binding on it, so I figured I'd do both. Find some way to bind a summoning spell to you."

Dean closed his eyes again, willing his mind to work.

"Ben -"

God, the risk the kid had taken - Dean didn't know the details of what, exactly, Ben had done yet, but with any spell work, the likeliness of getting something spectacularly screwed and meeting a bad end because of that was huge. Hell, he'd almost met the bad end of Ben's well-meaning spell work himself. He remembered poor Sam and his seventeen-year-old dweeb body swap. It had seemed funny at the time, but if he put Ben in the position of those kids, his blood ran cold. They had summoned demons, and one of them was dead. What the hell had Ben done to find him, to draw Dean to him with such power?

"You have no idea what you've done. You have to tell me exactly what you did, Ben, you could be in danger."

"I'm not," he replied with certainty that froze Dean's guts. "It worked. I found you. I didn't expect it to take me to you, I sort of thought it would be the other way around, but I don't care. It worked."

"That's because we mirrored the spell to break the link," Dean replied, eyes still closed - it was the only way he could get through this conversation. "We thought you were a monster, a spirit, something that needed killing."

"Sorry to disappoint," Ben replied with a smile, and Dean almost keeled over right there.

"What spell did you use. Tell me."

"A summoning spell, and a binding."

"The ritual, Ben. Tell me what you did."

Dean listened, speechless, as Ben calmly described midnight blood magic (making use of the shotgun he had left in Lisa's closet as a link to him) the kid had used to find him. It made sense why Ben had turned up now, then - Danny's mirroring has been precise enough to draw Ben's reversal at the hour it was cast on Dean. It was a mess of different elements - it was no wonder Danny had been confused, had found nothing to hold onto. Ben had researched, sure - he had found every piece of information that may have helped him in locating Dean and forcing him to come to Ben, and smashed it all together. It was amateur magic, uncontrolled and unpredictable. He saw only what he needed to see, the tools to finish his job. In a way Danny had been right - his methods - hell, _all _of their methods, had assumed this was a supernatural attack, something or someone that was using supernatural means to harm Dean. Ben's intentions couldn't have been further from that. All he wanted to do was find Dean, and bring him close. It was heartbreaking if he thought about it too closely.

"The risks you took -"

"I knew the risks. Maybe you didn't know yours, when you made us forget."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Ben smiled at him in that sad, all-too-knowing sort of way.

"I knew this could all blow up in my face, Dean. Did you really weigh the risks of what you did, what it would do to you?"

Yet again, Dean was speechless. He was having an insane amount of trouble reading this kid - sometimes Ben seemed so young and innocent that it stopped his heart, other times, he was talking to a young man experienced well beyond those short years.

"You lost all your family. Mom told me your mom died when you were a kid, and then your dad died just before you came to see us that first time. And then Sam died, and you came back again. Then you lost us, too."

Dean couldn't take much more of this. Ben wasn't finished.

"Yeah, well I'm not going to let you. You think you can decide for me which parts of my memory I'm better off without? That isn't even your decision. I remembered because I wanted to. Because I missed you and wanted to find you. You don't deserve to lose everything."

That was it. Dean tucked the Colt back into his waistband, stumbled the few steps to the stairs and sat heavily, head low. After a moment, Ben moved to sit at his side. There was something in the way he moved that reminded Dean so much of a teenage Sam, a readiness, a loose but purposeful grace. As he had already noted - the subtle tells of a young hunter. And a horrible thought occurred to Dean.

"I'm not your first hunt, am I."

Ben took a moment to reply. "No."

Dean groaned and buried his face in his hands. Great. Just great - he was inspiring short-lived hunters all over the country. First Danny, now Ben? He reminded Dean so much of Sam. Ah, Sam. If only he could have stopped his brother before it was too late, before the life took him and there was no blonde girlfriend and a pansy lawyer's blissfully ignorant life for him anymore. Dean couldn't bear the thought of dragging another dark-haired kid back into this life of blood with him. Not after seeing what it had done to Sam.

"Ben, you can't. You can't do this. You can't do this to your mom, to yourself. It's going to end bloody, it always does, and I can't let that happen to you. I knew that if I stayed you'd end up just like me and hey, looks like I was right."

The bright sarcasm made even him sick.

"And yet, you left, and still, here we are," Ben said, in that unnerving way that made him sound eerily like the adult Sam. "I know you did what you did to protect us. I know you think you're doing the right thing. Then you should be able to understand why I'm doing this, Dean. I got to protect you, too. Mainly from yourself."

Dean dropped his hands and made himself meet Ben's soft dark stare.

"You can't be part of this world, Ben. It's too dangerous."

Ben cast him a smile, caught halfway between pity and incredulity that Dean didn't quite get the motivation behind.

"Dean, I'm sitting here because I worked magic - okay so I kind of stuffed it up, but I still did it. I've even done some hunting, sort of. I did all that without you. I'm already part of this."

Dan dropped his gaze to the bitumen. Ben sighed in frustration at his side.

"Look, you told me once that I could have any life I wanted, right? It's not like I'm going to hit the road like you, and Sam. I'm going to finish high school and go to college and be all normal. But I'm a part of this. I _remember_ how dangerous it is, Dean, I know. And I'm still doing it. You don't get to make my decisions for me."

Dean said nothing, feeling oddly defeated. Ben was making sense, and Dean wished more than anything that he wasn't.


	8. Chapter 7 : End of the Line

Sam sat opposite Dean again, and couldn't decide if he was more horrified, shocked, worried, impressed or moved. He had jerked awake at 1am, and found Dean's bed empty. After everything, his mind skipped to the worst possible scenario, and he had fallen out of bed with a crash, waking Frank in the chair with a grunt of surprise.

"Dean," he gasped. "Where's Dean?"

He cast his eyes around the room, stumbled to the bathroom and flicked on the light. No Dean. Sam's heart-rate was climbing - where the hell was his brother? His brother who had been unconscious and unresponsive only hours before? Why the hell had he let himself fall asleep? Frank was saying something Sam couldn't hear - he lunged for the door, wrenching it open and bursting out barefoot onto the concrete. Someone, presumably Dean, had removed his sneakers. He hit the railing hard against his hips, and two pairs of eyes stared up at him from the steps in surprise - one his brother's familiar green, the other dark as shadows.

Sam reeled - what he hell was going on?

"What?" Was all he managed.

Dean had stood up, that conciliatory expression on his face, a placating hand held out against Sam.

"Watch your blood pressure, Sammy. It's okay."

Sam frowned down at the second figure that stood up behind Dean, looking up at him with wariness.

"Wait - is that - ?"

Dean glanced behind him at the boy at his shoulder.

"It's kind of a long story. Lets take it inside."

They had - and Sam was sitting opposite Dean in shock. _Ben Braeden? _Here? Now? The story that was unfolding before him was incredible. A short time after Sam had found Dean and Ben outside the motel, Danny limped back in, complete with crutches and cast. He stopped in the doorway, expression enquiring.

"Ah, I'm going to assume I missed something - ER took forever."

With that, Ben had laid it out for the four shocked hunters in the room.

"So?" Dean had finally enquired of Danny.

The older hunter ran a hand through his jagged dark hair.

"Well, so far as I can figure it, Ben's spell used a summoning that attached to Dean's spirit, rather than his body. That was part of the invocation he used - _Spirit through flesh, may be enmeshed. _Combine that with blood sacrifice and a binding, plus the link being an object Dean used to a supernatural rather than physical effect, and I think the combination tried to pull Dean's spirit out of his body and summon that to Ben. It makes sense - desires come from spirit, not flesh, the irresistible compulsion to go somewhere without knowing why, the eventual blackout. The body can't live without the spirit."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Sam protested. "I was walking around a whole year without a soul." He looked up to find Danny staring at him in a way that suddenly made him self-conscious. "I mean, why wasn't I out cold?"

Danny blinked at him. "Hey, matters of spirit and soul are kind of at the outer reaches of my pay grade." He frowned at Sam in a way that ridiculously made him lower his eyes. "Maybe it depends on how it was done, and by who," Danny continued. "I only know one thing powerful enough to lay claim to a soul. Maybe Ben's connection with Dean was enough to attach to his living spirit, the way a ghost can latch itself onto an object. A soul - who knows what that even is. At least ghosts we know."

"So I've what, spent the last week or two wandering around as a ghost? Think I'd remember that?" Dean said.

"Not necessarily," Danny replied. "You weren't actually dead, that's the thing. So not a traditional ghost. Just dispossessed. The essence and life-force of Dean Winchester. A strained in-between of energy."

"Wait a second, you said some serious power was involved here. Unless there's something else Ben isn't telling us, I don't see the juice."

Danny smiled at him. "As I said, who and how. Don't underestimate the kind of power that doesn't come from demons and blood sacrifice. You're his family. He loves you."

"I'm really sorry," Ben interrupted their speculation. "I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt."

"I know, it's okay," Dean assured him immediately, and it still surprised Sam sometimes his brother's ability to forgive. Ben's ill-advised spell work had almost killed him, but the last thing he wanted to do was keep the kid on the hook.

"We're all okay, and that's what matters. Everything else is fixable."

Memories of Dean's words to a possessed Sam echoed through his head. _Well you're okay, and that's what matters. _

"What about me?" Ben asked of the floor.

"You're going home to your mom and not saying a damn word about any of this," Dean said unequivocally, pushing to his feet and heading for the bathroom sink.

"No arguments from me," Ben agreed, hands raised in surrender.

Sam sat back in his chair. Of course, it wasn't going to be as simple as that, and despite Dean's tendency to downplay, he knew his brother knew it too. Ben was a hunter whether Dean had stayed or not, and the whole thing just got messier and messier. He'd worked some serious mojo to find Dean and drag his spirit out of his body. He was already part of this. Sending him home to his mother with an admonition to keep his head down wasn't going to cut it. The boy was in danger being that young, in a civilian situation, no one to back him up. But what else were they supposed to do? Sam rubbed his hands over his face. There was no better option, and he could see the same conclusion in Dean's glance as his brother moved back into the room.

"Road trip, come on. We'll take you home."

"Dude, I still can't believe you went on spirit finding detail on a broken ankle," Dean said for at least the fourth time, grinning across the room at Danny.

The older hunter didn't even bother to look up from the paper he was reading, giving Dean the stock answer he had the past four times he'd said it.

"Still doesn't mean I like you or anything."

His flat grey eyes stayed on the paper, but his smile was genuine.

Dean snorted, stretching interlaced hands above his head. He looked weirdly tired, to Sam, despite essentially having slept for over a week. He surmised sardonically that near-fatally having your spirit dragged out of your body could do that to a guy.

They had taken Ben to within a safe distance of Lisa's place, and stopped. Dean was apparently deliberately avoiding looking at anything other than Ben, and Sam couldn't blame him. The boy had smiled up at Dean regardless of everything that had happened.

"Well - thanks, I guess. And I'm sorry."

Dean nodded. "No more midnight summonings, okay?"

Ben nodded, but his dark eyes snapped back to Dean's face. "I meant what I said, Dean. I'm not going to hit the road, but I'm not turning my back, either."

Sam had taken the words as pertaining to the supernatural, but the suddenly uncomfortable look that crashed over his brother's features had him wondering what else, exactly, he and Ben had talked about after the kid showed up.

"Just take care of yourself, Ben. And next time, use a cellphone."

Ben laughed at that. "Now I got a working number, sure."

A beat, and the kid stepped forward and hugged Dean. His brother looked a little shocked for a moment, before his arms came up automatically, and sorrow crept into his expression. A bracing smile was back in place by the time Ben stepped back, but Sam had caught that sadness even if the kid hadn't.

He gave a nod and a smile at Sam, who returned the gesture before Ben turned and jogged the distance down the street back to his mother's house, and likely a lecture about informing her before staying the night with his friends.

Sam and Dean stood against the rented, rather than stolen, Ford and watched him. Danny had stayed back at the motel, keeping a tab on the room and their collective belongings, plus resting up his ankle and checking in Dean's OK with Pete the medic. Sam liked Danny sure, but was a little glad to be alone with his brother right now.

"So, what now?"

Dean was silent a moment. "Now nothing. There's nothing we can do about it, Sam."

Despite the pessimism in his brother's tone, the unconscious "we" of the statement made Sam smile involuntarily. They'd been through a lot - hell, more than anyone could and stay sane, and for his part sometimes the guilt of what he had done over the past few years came close to drowning Sam. But for Dean, he was always little brother, always Dean's family, as close as a part of himself.

"He's going to do this and I can't really stop him. I'm not even sure if I have any right to. I just don't want him getting hurt."

"I know."

"But what the hell else are we supposed to do, throw him in the back of whatever shitty ride we steal this week and make sure he ends up just like us, or worse?"

Before Sam could offer a conciliatory reply, Dean rolled away from the car with a snarl and circled around to the driver's door. Sam shook his head, but followed suit, ducking into the passenger's seat with something that felt like resignation.

Dean was right. They had to trust in Ben himself - which wasn't exactly easy or comfortable, given recent events.

By the time they got back to the motel, Danny was packed and had ordered them an all-day breakfast. They packed the duffels without comment, Danny casting Dean covert glances from behind the paper.

But there was nothing left to say, and despite the lingering mixture of emotions this strange case had dug up, a breakfast specifically designed to give you cardio-vascular disease went a long way to restoring Dean's sense of equilibrium. Sam shook his head.

"So where to?" Dean asked of no one in particular.

"Colorado," Danny replied. "The arisae may be down, but I got to go back for my truck."

"And nothing weird for miles out of Lincoln," Sam added. "Just get back on the road I guess."

Despite all the madcap travelling he had done recently cross-hatching the country in Danny's wake, Sam found all he wanted was to get back on the road with Dean and no particular destination, just a direction. West. People always headed west.

Dean nodded, pushing to his feet and hooking a hand through the strap of the nearest bag.

"Come on, lets hit the road."

The End.


End file.
